Debates of Dec. 6th, 2021

Criminal Code

[Lori Idlout, NDP, Nunavut, NU]

Uqaqtittiji, qujannamiik.

It is clear now that my whole focus in my line of questioning has been to find ways to ease the burden on the health system. Nunavut has three main regions. Kitikmeot is one of them. With Kitikmeot, Cambridge Bay is the regional hub. Outlying those communities are Qikiqtaaluk, Kugluktuk, Kugaaruk and Gjoa Haven. They all rely on visiting doctors. There are no full-time doctors available to them. They do have available to them on-call physicians, who are available by phone to assist the nurses.

This bill, the amendments to the Canada Labour Code, would give the employer the power to require the employee to provide a medical certificate for any paid sick leave, regardless of the number of days—

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

I apologize, but I have to give the hon. member the chance to reply, and we are already over time.

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

Madam Speaker, there has been growth in the ways in which medical assistance has been provided. We have certainly seen that through COVID, where we have seen more online or phone call assessments. Those things have played a very important role throughout COVID.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is a great honour, as always, to stand in the House, representing the people of Timmins—James Bay, and to be here in the House tonight as we, from all parties, attempt to pass legislation on what is coming close to the second anniversary of the pandemic.

If someone had said to me in March 2020 that we would be in the House debating the need to get 10 days of paid sick leave or to have laws in place to stop the harassment and threats of medical professionals by people who are our neighbours, I would have said it was simply impossible.

COVID has taught us, and COVID is a very hard teacher, but it has been clear from the get-go that it is something bigger than anything that was within our human imagination. Our generation has never seen anything like this. Throughout COVID, I find myself going back to Albert Camus's The Plague. I have been reading it and rereading it. He wrote:

Our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves.

He went on:

They disbelieved in pestilences. A pestilence isn’t a thing made to man’s measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogey of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn’t always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is people who pass away, [especially those who] haven’t taken their precautions.

When we are talking about the need to have 10 days of paid sick leave two years into a pandemic, I feel like we have found ourselves in some kind of dark, dystopian Groundhog Day, that what we are repeating again and again are the same mistakes, and we are still having difficulty learning the lessons of a pandemic. The pandemic does not care whether we believe in it or not; the pandemic does not care if it is fair, and the pandemic certainly does not care about the short-term goals of various political leaders like Jason Kenney, who decided to announce that last summer was going to be the greatest summer ever, because he was simply going to ignore health protocols in order to make his party look good. He plunged Alberta into medical chaos and caused the deaths of too many innocent people.

I think of Doug Ford. As people were dying in warehouses in Peel, Brampton and the 401 and 905 areas, he was not willing to put paid sick leave in. In fact, he recently said he believed that come January there would be no need for vaccine mandates. This is a man who is still refusing to learn lessons.

We know here of the culpability of the Canadian government in fighting at the WTO against the right of the global south to create vaccines. Did anyone think that omicron would not happen, and that we would allow ourselves first-wave and second-wave boosters and protect ourselves but not ensure adequate vaccination in other parts of the globe, and that somehow the pandemic would not go there and come back? Now we are dealing with omicron.

Camus says that we have learned that the pandemic has made us all share the same collective fate. It is a hard lesson we are learning.

I remember how everyone rose up in the first wave and how hopeful it was. People took up hobbies and people were going to get themselves physically fit. Camus said, “At first, the fact of being cut off from the outside world was accepted with a more or less good grace, much as people would have put up with any other temporary inconvenience that interfered with only a few of their habits. But now they had abruptly become aware that they were undergoing a sort of incarceration.”

I think, in the isolation and difficulties, the vast majority of people carried on. This morning, when I walked through the snowstorms in Ottawa, I saw almost every single person wearing a mask. The vast majority of people have taken up what they know is going to be a difficult and maybe long-term issue. Sure, they complain. They have a right to complain, but they carry on.

In the first and second waves, people phoned our offices daily. We tried to help, we tried to give them answers and we tried to keep businesses going. Those people had legitimate fears, fears about the future of their business, fears about health care, fears about all the disinformation and falsehoods. They were all legitimate questions because we were dealing with something bigger than ourselves.

I found by the fourth wave that things had shifted to a sullen tiredness in the vast majority of people. However, a small minority of people had gone to a different place, a kind of radicalized sense of self-isolation and self-entitlement, a belief that somehow the government, the medical institutions and their neighbours were all against their right to go and do what they had always wanted to do. They were not doing their share, so the rest of the population was doing it.

Then we started seeing these terrible images that compared the mass murder of the Jewish families in Ukraine with the fact that Buddy could not go to East Side Mario's because he refused to get a vaccine. Then they began to turn on front-line medical workers. I talked to paramedics who said to me, “What is it about us?” These paramedics were out in the middle of the night on the highways at accidents, or were helping during the opioid crises, or were on the front-lines at the hospitals. They wanted to know why they were being targeted. In my region, a doctor was harassed and gave up her practice.

There is something deeply wrong when we have to come here at this point. Finally, after two years, we recognize the fundamental medical principle that if people are feeling sick, they should not go to work. That is the most common-sense way to stop the spread, particularly now with omicron variant.

The fact that we need to have a law to protect workers from harassment is deeply concerning. We will stand up for the medical workers and we will bring that law in. However, in doing that, let us not forget and let us not diminish the fact that there is incredible fortitude among the Canadian people.

I was very disheartened to hear my Conservative colleague talk about how we had to accommodate people who denied science, people who denied the need to have a collective responsibility for their neighbours, as opposed to saying no, that we stand for the right of people to go to work and be safe, that when people go to work, school or the hospital, they can go home at the end of the day even in these hard and uncertain times because they know their government is taking every step possible. That is part of what we are here to do tonight.

We need to address the need to change the TRIPS waiver. Canada has to stop being a laggard on the international stage. It has to show leadership. We are, as Camus says, all collectively in the same boat when it comes to the pandemic.

I would like to end by quoting Camus again, because what isolation has taught me is the power of family, the power of community and certainly, for me, the power of live music, which I hope comes back. Camus writes about the people in the village and says, “They knew now that if there is one thing one can always yearn for, and sometimes attain, it is human love.” He said that out of the plague that affected the people in his town, that he realized there was so much more to admire in people than to despise.

Finally, and I find this so powerful because I am so tired and disheartened and hurt by what COVID has done to the fabric of our communities and our sense of confidence and our ability to see each. Camus says, “What's true of all the evils in the world is true of the plague as well”, because it helps people “rise above themselves.”

We are in the fourth wave or the beginning of a fifth wave, I do not know how many waves, but we are not out of the COVID pandemic. It is with us now, but we do not have to give in to it. We do not have to give in to fear and we do not have to give in to stupidity. There are smart ways. It is the only way we can take on COVID and restore that sense of human community and the bond that keeps us together.

I urge my colleagues to support the legislation.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to compliment my friend from Timmins—James Bay for an excellent speech that makes a number of really important points. I wish I had time to delve into all of them. I hope he will forgive me for using the opportunity of asking him a question to make something very clear. There have been a lot of allusions in today's debate that somehow equate non-violent civil disobedience against pipeline construction, which is an effort to protect human health and to save our planet and why I was arrested in that activity, and harassing health care workers.

I would like to ask the hon. member if he does not agree that the equivalency is around the kinds of protests and that no protest should be in any way threatening or violent to any kind of worker. That is where we draw the line. It is not about whether it is infrastructure or a hospital. It is about the activity of the protesters. For some reason, anti-vax protesters have been allowed to conduct themselves in ways that were appalling while indigenous protesters were violently arrested.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Madam Speaker, I found it deeply concerning that my Conservative colleagues throughout this discussion, where we were all coming to terms with the need to protect health care workers, have continually insinuated that there is something reasonable about anti-vaxxers and that we should accommodate them when we have threats being made against children at toy stores, and then equating that with the right to protest of indigenous peoples.

The right of indigenous peoples to defend their lands and their territories is a fundamental principle that we have to stand up for in this House. I will always stand up in this House and say the right of indigenous peoples to defend their territories is a fundamental, universal principle whether the Conservatives and some of their anti-vax supporters like that or not.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, there are two aspects to the bill. I agree with many of the words the member has said about health care workers, the whole idea of the protests, how our health care workers stepped up to the plate and the revolting treatment that some people feel they are entitled to give them.

My question is with respect to the other aspect of the bill and that is with the paid sick days. The NDP have implied that they have some concerns in regards to it. Can the member give any indication, from his perspective, if there are some specific amendments that they already have in mind? What are the concerns that the member would have with regard to that aspect of the bill, assuming that the member does support the bill in principle?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Madam Speaker, certainly, I think the deepest concern we had is that our leader pushed the Prime Minister 20-some times in the House on the need to have 10 days paid sick leave as the first, second and third waves were hammering people and we saw such massive deaths particularly in the for-profit, long-term care system, and we saw no action. It was not until the election was called that the Prime Minister suddenly had that come to God moment where he realized, “Please re-elect me and I will bring in something” that we had been asking for all along.

I am glad that we are bringing it in now. I am glad that we will get to committee to make sure that it works, but I think of all the people in long-term care who could have used this when the government refused to act.

[Lianne Rood, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Madam Speaker, I want to congratulate my colleague for his great speech. I just want to take an opportunity to thank all the health care workers who are in my riding and our frontline workers who have been working so diligently through the pandemic over almost two years now. On Friday, I actually had the opportunity to be in Wallaceburg where the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance has announced that we are going to be building a new hospital in the riding. It is very exciting to see great health care coming into the riding to replace the old infrastructure.

I am just wondering if the member opposite shares the same sentiment that I have of thanking health care workers and making sure that we protect critical infrastructure, whether it is hospitals or beyond, and if he thinks that we should take this bill to committee so that we can study that to make sure that we are protecting all critical infrastructure.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Madam Speaker, let us always remember the incredible work the health care workers are doing. In Parry Sound the paramedics are going door to door right now to help people. They are doing home visits. That is how we step up in Canada. We have to be there for all our health care workers and all our frontline workers in every capacity to protect them from the kind of harassment that is ongoing.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise and debate this important motion. I want to break it down because it really should be two bills. We are dealing with a Criminal Code matter and also a paid sick leave matter.

I listened with some amusement when a Liberal MP stood and said these bills should be connected because we are talking about protecting hospitals, but people also get sick and they need sick leave, so really it should just be one bill. By that justification, maybe we only need one bill in the House for the whole session because everything deals with money, so just one bill is needed. That is an aside.

This legislation is important. I will start off by saying that our doctors, our nurses, the clerks and all of the staff at hospitals work incredibly hard. I have a lot of family in health care. Both of my grandmothers were nurses and my father is a nurse. Having a safe workplace is a right for all people.

During the last election, we heard a great deal of rhetoric in this country over the issue of vaccines. This rhetoric led to unacceptable activities. People crossed the line from peacefully protesting whatever their viewpoint was on a subject. We have the constitutional right to peaceful protest protected in this country. I was pleased to see language in the bill that emphasized that Canadians have a right to peacefully protest: they have a right to take placards to events to state what they believe. That is a fundamental right in this country.

However, when someone is harassing or intimidating health care workers, and in some cases we saw that health care workers were assaulted, that really crosses the line. We have Criminal Code laws that deal with this, but it is critically important that this legislation sends a strong message that this is unacceptable activity.

Thankfully, we have not seen these protests continue in recent days and in the weeks since the election ended, but if people feel the need to forcefully protest, I invite them to come to my office. I am a politician. We are here in the House, and this is where we make the decisions. It is not the nurses and the doctors who make the decisions, it is the politicians. Whatever my stance is on a subject, come to my office. People can protest at my office. I will invite them any day. I will argue with people. I will debate with people. That is what democracy is all about. Come to my office and leave the health care workers alone. That is a really important part of this bill.

We also have to talk about unnecessary rhetoric leading into this thing. We just need to lower the rhetoric on this situation so that we can bring Canadians together again. We had a divisive election. The pandemic crisis is causing people to suffer from mental health issues. This has been talked about by all members in the House, and I think we need a lot more understanding.

A lot of times when I listen to the Liberals, it seems like they are not understanding or recognizing the fact that they say in the House all the time that there is a mental health crisis, there are people who are feeling left out, there are people feeling lonely and there are people who have lost their jobs because of this pandemic. There is not a lot of understanding coming from the government.

It does not mean that I agree with the stances that people take, but when we have a government that is raising the rhetoric and demonizing individuals, it is no surprise that we see unacceptable activity like this happen. We need to talk about uniting Canadians again. On the Conservative side, we are focused on uniting Canadians.

The second part of this bill is talking about paid sick leave. We have heard a lot about 10 days of paid sick leave in the House. I was perusing the Internet, and the wonderful thing about the Internet is that once something is on there, it never really goes away. The first time I could find the government talking about paid sick leave was May 26, 2020. For those who were not here, that was a couple of months after Friday, March 13. I remember that day. I was giving an S.O. 31. That is when the Prime Minister's wife contracted COVID.

That woke everyone up in the House to the fact that the pandemic was a really serious thing. It was starting to hit us and we needed to take action. There was a lot of scrambling. People did not understand what was going on. It was just a couple months later that it was recognized. The NDP fought for this and said that people needed 10 days of paid sick leave in Canada because people felt like they needed to go to work, but they might be sick with COVID, and the NDP did not want these people going to work and spreading that sickness around.

It was also around the same time that we were talking about bringing in a virtual Parliament. The NDP stood up very strongly and said they were not going to approve this virtual Parliament unless the Liberal government supported 10 days of paid sick leave. Here we are, well over a year later and in an entirely different Parliament, and we are debating this piece of legislation. It is literally just one page.

How difficult was it for the government to come up with this legislation? In the May 26 article, the government said it would be implementing this without delay. It has been over a year and a half. We have had an election, and we have had two throne speeches. The government has still not implemented the legislation. We are just targeting it now.

The Liberals were saying they had to work with the provinces about this. I do not see anything in this legislation to indicate why it would take the government over a year to negotiate with the provinces to get 10 days of paid sick leave. Now we have this one-page document, which is not even important enough to the government for it to warrant its own legislative number, as it has been grouped with a Criminal Code amendment. Obviously, it was not that complicated.

Why did it take the government over a year to implement paid sick leave? I think it is a bit ridiculous that it was talking about this May 26, 2020, and it is now December 6, 2021. There has been an election and two speeches from the throne. Now that we are talking about this in the House, Canadians are finally seeing action.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.

The Environment

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Madam Speaker, the last few weeks have seen devastating flooding in British Columbia. After a summer of extreme heat and climate fires, the climate crisis is here. It is real, and this is just the beginning. Canadians are already feeling the impacts. They want to see concrete action to address this emergency with the urgency required.

However, the Liberal government continues to delay. Canada remains the highest emitter per capita and is the country with the 10th-largest share of historical emissions. Since the Liberals formed government in 2015, Canada has become the worst performer of all G7 nations.

The environment commissioner has released a series of scathing reports on Canada's inaction, saying, “We can't continue to go from failure to failure; we need action and results, not just more targets and plans.”

The Liberal government is not on track to achieve the targets it has committed to. The commissioner looked at the Liberals' emissions reduction fund, and despite its name, he found that this emissions reduction fund is not actually reducing emissions at all. The Liberals are using faulty greenhouse gas emission estimates to fund the oil and gas sector, putting at risk not only our emission reduction targets, but also the health of all Canadians.

Two out of three companies stated in their application that the program would allow them to increase production levels, which would lead to increased emissions, and more than half of the total claimed that reductions had already been accounted for under federal methane regulations.

Any funding aimed at oil and gas companies should at least, at the bare minimum, be tied to delivering emission reductions. Otherwise, they are undermining efforts to fight climate change and meet our climate targets. They are fuelling the climate crisis.

Not only did the government not link this funding to actual emissions reductions, it did not make sure it was getting value for money to help maintain employment or attract investments, which were the other aims of the program. Simply put, the Liberals are not showing the climate leadership that they repeatedly told Canadians they could expect.

The Prime Minister likes to talk about how his plan gets an A, and that his promises get top marks, but the sad truth is that the Prime Minister does not follow through on his promises. When one misses every single climate target and delays climate action in the middle of a climate crisis, one gets an F. It is failing.

Canadians cannot wait any longer while the Liberals drag their feet. Canada will not meet our climate targets if the government continues to subsidize oil and gas rather than investing in a credible plan for workers in a clean economy.

Why is the government continuing to give billions of dollars to big oil and gas? When will the Liberals stop dragging their feet on laying out a credible green jobs plan? When will they stop dragging their feet on investing in climate solutions? When will they take action that matches the scale and urgency of the crisis? When will we finally have a government that not only acknowledges we are in a climate crisis, but also acts like it?

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Minister of Environment and Climate Change]

Madam Speaker, I beg to differ on many of the assumptions that the member has made, but I will speak specifically to the issue of fossil fuel subsidies.

I will say to this House and to the member that Canada remains committed to phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, as was committed to by G20 countries in Pittsburgh in 2009, and that we committed to do so two years earlier than our G20 partners. These countries had committed to do this by 2025, and we will be doing this by 2023. To support Canada's efforts to fulfill its commitment, we have committed to undergo a peer review of those subsidies under the G20 process. Argentina will be doing that on behalf of Canada. Once the process is completed, the results will be communicated in a transparent and timely manner.

Canada has already made significant progress towards meeting its commitment to phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. Since 2007, the government has taken action to phase out eight tax measures supporting the fossil fuel sector.

However, beyond Canada's commitment to phasing out fossil fuel subsidies, the government also believes that creating good, well-paying jobs in the low-carbon economy and ensuring that workers have the right tools and skills essential to building a sustainable and prosperous future for Canada is a priority. Simply put, we cannot achieve climate action and the transition to a low-carbon economy without putting people first.

To empower workers and communities through the transition, we must address the immediate challenges of jobs and economic growth in ways that establish the foundation for long-term economic, social and environmental sustainability. The Government of Canada is delivering on this commitment by continuing to support workers and communities impacted by the phase-out of coal, and we are launching engagement on just transition legislation to ensure that workers and communities will thrive in a carbon-constrained world. We are also making significant investment in skills training to ensure workers are able to succeed in the low-carbon economy.

The measures detailed in budget 2021 are expected to deliver almost 500,000 new training and work opportunities for Canadians. Canada cannot reach net-zero emissions by 2050 without the participation, know-how and innovation ideas of all Canadians.

[Laurel Collins, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Madam Speaker, when confronted with the failure of the emissions reduction fund to reduce emissions, the Minister of Natural Resources said that the program did not qualify as the kind of fossil fuel subsidy that the government has promised to eliminate by the end of 2023, despite 27 of the first 40 projects funded by the program claiming that they would be increasing production.

If handing out taxpayer money to oil and gas companies with no strings attached, and no assurances of reduced emissions, does not count as a subsidy, can the minister explain what does?

[Steven Guilbeault, Liberal, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Madam Speaker, let me reassure the hon. member that the commitment of our government is to phase out fossil fuel subsidies that are aimed at increasing the production of said fossil fuels. Going forward, we will support every industrial sector, every sector of our economy, to decarbonize. We will be helping the cement sector, the aluminum sector and the auto sector. We will also be helping the oil and gas sector to decarbonize and reduce emissions so that Canada can reach its net-zero target and obviously our 2030 target.

Infrastructure

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Madam Speaker, last week I had a question for the Minister of Emergency Preparedness about the recent flooding in the Fraser Valley and in particular in Abbotsford, which touches on my riding. I pointed out in my question that the Sumas Prairie diking system needs repair. We have known that for a long time. That is not news, and we knew that the price tag would be roughly $500 million, which seems like a big amount of money, but the cost to repair it if there was a flood would be significantly higher. Our worst nightmare came to pass a couple of weeks ago.

I was happy to hear the Minister of Emergency Preparedness say that there would be money. The federal government sees the responsibility there, so I hope he brought his chequebook today because I have a specific ask.

Here is a bit of background first. Sumas Prairie used to be Sumas Lake. It is a wetlands area. It was subject to annual flooding twice a year: a spring freshet and, in the fall, heavy rains such as we saw. About 100 years ago, it was diked off, canals were put in and big pumping stations pumped it dry. It is very fertile farmland.

There is another area of Abbotsford, which I am sure the minister is aware of because he visited there recently. It is called the Matsqui district. It is also low-lying land subject to annual flooding, but there is a diking system there. It held back the water this time around. That is a good thing because it is holding back the mighty Fraser. When that breaks, we have a really big problem.

I met with Mayor Braun on the weekend, together with my colleague the member for Abbotsford. We said to him that we were going to be meeting with the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, and asked him what specifically we needed. Mayor Braun said we needed money. Those two diking systems still need to be repaired at roughly $500 million for each of them, and they need to be seismically upgraded. It is a lot of money and I recognize that. Therefore, we are asking for some money.

However, here is a second question for the minister, which is more complicated. We need to negotiate with the United States of America, because the Nooksack River, which runs solely within the state of Washington in Whatcom County, also contributed in a very significant way to the flooding this time.

This is also a problem that we have known about for many years. I read a report recently that talked about the complexity of it. It is complex. It is the harder question, and the harder problem to solve. I wonder what the Minister of Emergency Preparedness says about that.

The first issue is money, and the second is negotiating with the United States.

[Bill Blair, Liberal, President of the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Emergency Preparedness]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my friend from Langley—Aldergrove for his collaboration on this really important issue.

He is absolutely correct: I recently travelled to Abbotsford. It is not the first time I have been to Abbotsford, nor the first time I have met with Mayor Braun. I am aware of the extraordinary impact the recent flooding events have had on that community and the many other parts of the Lower Mainland of B.C. that have been impacted.

I regret to tell my friend that I did not bring a chequebook with me today, but I have some other good news that I think will respond to his inquiry.

When this terrible event began, I was in regular contact with the B.C. government about it. In the earliest hours, the Canadian Armed Forces responded. To provide some critically important labour, 650 members of the Canadian Armed Forces arrived in the Abbotsford area and have helped with diking, repairs and sandbagging. I went there and witnessed the exceptional work they were doing, and they were doing it alongside the people of the communities that were impacted. Frankly, it made me proud, as I am sure it does my friend from Langley—Aldergrove, to be a Canadian to watch how people responded in these very difficult times.

I acknowledge that important work needs to be done. However, one of the things we have seen over the past several years is an increase in the amount of money the Government of Canada has been expending on disaster financial assistance, through the arrangements we have with the provinces and territories, in response to flooding events. In fact, some of the analysis shows that we can expect it, as a direct result of climate change, to rise exponentially, to five times its current level of expenditure. It is so important that we invest significantly in disaster mitigation and adaptation in all of those areas to ensure we have resilient infrastructure. The diking system to which my friend refers is a very important part of that.

As I am sure he is also aware, the diking system was initially the responsibility of the provincial government, but it was downloaded to the municipality. Mayor Braun shared with me, as I suspect he shared with my friend, that because the municipality draws its resources from property taxes, it was unable to make the investments and do the work that was necessary. I spoke with the Premier of British Columbia and he said that was a mistake.

We have also set up a joint committee with the provinces and the territories, and I am insisting that municipalities be involved in it as well. We will invest federal dollars to accompany provincial dollars, and will work with the municipality to repair those dikes to ensure that we build a greater resilience for the community. Building back is not good enough; we need to build back better. I know that is sometimes an overused phrase, but we recognize the importance of investing in that.

Last year, in budget 2021, we committed $1.4 million to the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund. We know where those dollars will need to be spent, and although there is no chequebook today, I want to assure my friend that we will be there with the people of British Columbia. That is a very important community in this country given the farm work that goes on there. We have seen the resilience of its people, and we need to make sure their community is resilient as well.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Madam Speaker, spending $1.4 million on a study is important of course, but we are talking about $1 billion. If the minister did not bring the chequebook today, will it be in the budget? It is absolutely essential. It is existential to the Fraser Valley.

The minister did not make any reference to negotiating a treaty with the United States regarding the Nooksack River and the Columbia River, through the International Joint Commission. This is very important. We cannot do this alone. We need our American allies with us on this. I would like his comments on that.

[Bill Blair, Liberal, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have a point of clarification, as perhaps I did not make myself clear in my articulation. What we put in budget 2021 was $1.4 billion for the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund. This is not for a study, but to begin to do some of the important work. I will also tell the member that in Lower Mainland B.C. and Abbotsford, as well as in many places right across the country, we know that work needs to be done.

Let me also acknowledge that parts of the United States, which in many ways has been ahead of us on this, have invested in creating a more resilient infrastructure to deal with the potential of disasters in its communities. However, this work is ongoing, with collaboration between our two countries.

We recognize that water does not respect international boundaries. It does not flow north to south; it flows downhill. When the Nooksack River overflows its banks, the water tends to head right up the Sumas Prairie. It was not solely responsible for the flooding that took place but was a part of it.

We will work with the Government of the United States, Washington state, the B.C. government and the communities impacted to make a difference.

The Economy

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am very happy to rise today as I do not feel I received a satisfactory answer from the Minister of Families, Children and Social Development when I asked my question originally.

Not only does a child care deal not kick in for about five years, according to the government's own plans, it is completely separate from the issue of inflation. Yes, child care costs are high, but it is not why the cost of gas, home heating, groceries, diapers and pretty much everything else is going up faster than it probably should be. In fact, I would expect that the rising prices across the entire economy will probably get worse as government spending continues to increase.

Quite frankly, child care providers will have additional costs put on them if inflation continues to increase. They have to buy groceries for the children. They have to heat their facilities. There are many additional expenditures that will go onto those child care providers, and I am very curious how they will make ends meet.

Lowering child care costs is incredibly important for families that have children in need of care, but let us face some very important facts that this is a very small percentage of the population. It will not help people who have no children or families that have older children. It will not help seniors. It will not help the family with the stay-at-home mom or stay-at-home dad. It will not help a family that works shift work whose children need overnight care.

So many families are being left behind by those answers, and I really do want to hear what the government is doing with the very real issue that is inflation. Families are coming to me and sharing their concerns about making ends meet this month.

While it is wonderful to hear that some plans are in place to help some families, this does not help the senior down the street who is really struggling with the fact that groceries have gone up in price exponentially in the last little while. It does not help the families that are struggling today. Therefore, I really want to hear an answer from the government on how it plans to address this very real concern around inflation.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Minister of Families]

Madam Speaker, we recognize that inflation is certainly a challenge that families, indeed all Canadians and almost everyone around the world is grappling with right now. It is important to understand the basic premise around inflation. It is not that this is a uniquely Canadian issue. It is happening right around the world. It is caused by challenges with regard to the supply chain, by rising demand, by the fact that we are hopefully coming out of, although continue to be in, one of the worst global health crises that we have ever seen.

There are a lot of reasons we are in this challenging situation, but it is abundantly clear that this government has been there for Canadians both before the pandemic and during the pandemic, and we will be there after the pandemic. One of the very first things that we did when we came into office was bring forward the Canada child benefit, which meant we were not sending cheques to millionaires, like the previous Conservative government, but to families who needed them most. Before the 2019 election, we indexed the Canada child benefit to inflation because we knew how important it was for families to make ends meet. I have heard from countless constituents and families across the country about the difference that the Canada child benefit has made for their families, whether it meant they were buying groceries or able to afford diapers in a world that they were not able to before.

When it comes to seniors, it is one of the reasons we lowered the age of eligibility for old age security from 67 to 65. Let us not forget that the previous Conservative government would have put millions of Canadian seniors into poverty with that policy change. That was one of the very first things that we did when we were elected in 2015. In the pandemic, we also issued a one-time payment for all OAS recipients to help them with the additional costs they had, and another payment for families that received the Canada child benefit, understanding that costs were going up. This government has been there for Canadians of all ages, all backgrounds, all persuasions and all families, no matter how old their children are and we will continue to do that.

Let me talk a bit about child care. Child care is good for kids and it is good for families. Having affordable day care is going to help families deal with the rising costs of everything else around them, but it is also going to help the economy writ large. Let me provide one statistic: 240,000. That is the number of women who will likely enter the workforce because we are making child care more affordable. That means that we are going to be helping address some of the labour shortages, but it also means that families are going to be able to have both parents or a single parent working and hopefully earning a better income. These are good things for kids, for families and for the economy writ large.

Finally, let me talk about the supports that we provided through the pandemic. My hon. colleague and members of the Conservative Party continue to talk about money into the economy as if it were a bad thing. At the height of the pandemic, nine million Canadians were on the Canada emergency response benefit. Let us just imagine if we had not done that. What would poverty in this country look like? This was very important. We were there for Canadians and we will continue to be there.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Madam Speaker, at the beginning of the minister's speech, she talked about the fact that inflation is a worldwide problem. Yes, it is a worldwide problem. However, it is worse in Canada than almost any country around the world. That is really important to know because, quite frankly, we need to make sure that what we are doing is actually taking care of all Canadians. The concern that I brought up around inflation is a real concern that is facing many families.

When I shared the clip on my social media, seniors reached out to me and sent me personal messages. They are very concerned that the question was important, was dismissed by the minister and that the real concerns about inflation and the cost of groceries going up were not being addressed. I live in northern Canada. I live in northern Alberta and groceries are more expensive—

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

The hon. minister.

[Karina Gould, Liberal, Burlington, ON]

Madam Speaker, one thing I will not do and one thing our government will not do is pit different age groups of Canadians against each other. This is exactly why we know that supporting young families through affordable child care is not just good for young families, it is good for the entire economy. It is why we know that increasing old age security and the guaranteed income supplement, again, is not just good for seniors, it is good for the entire economy.

When it comes to lifting Canadians out of poverty, we will be here for them no matter what their age, no matter what their background, because it is good for all of us.