Madam Speaker, I want to begin by putting in context what this budget means. We are over a year into a global pandemic and it has hit hard. It has hit the world hard, and it has hit people here in Canada very hard.
Specifically, we know the impacts have been devastating; people have lost their jobs; people have lost their businesses; and people have lost their lives. We also know the pandemic has disproportionately impacted some people. We know indigenous people, who have lived with historic and ongoing injustice when it comes to access to health care and overcrowded housing, have felt the impact of this pandemic even more.
We know women have been disproportionately impacted by this pandemic. Women have lost their jobs in service sector and care economy positions. We also know that on top of having to care for children and aging loved ones, women are stretched to the brink and they cannot find affordable child care, so they have been disproportionately impacted to the point that women are now at the lowest job participation rate in decades.
We know that racialized people have been disproportionately impacted. Some of the hardest-hit communities in our country are where there are more newcomers, new Canadians and racialized people. We know of frontline workers who have to go into factories and warehouses, whether it is in logistics or transportation, and are working in grocery stores, on the front lines. These are workers who are often among the most vulnerable and often racialized. They have been disproportionately impacted.
We know young people have felt the burden of this pandemic significantly. Young people who are just starting off their careers saw their jobs cut. Young people who hoped to work in the summer saw many of the jobs they usually worked no longer there. Young people who are looking to build their lives, find partners and grow their careers are unable to do so. Young people have been disproportionately impacted.
One of the greatest shames, something I have referred to as a national shame, is that this pandemic has disproportionately impacted seniors, particularly seniors in long-term care. They have borne the brunt of this pandemic with their lives, and it is something we cannot allow to continue. It should have never happened in the first place, but we cannot allow this to continue.
Now we are dealing with the third wave. The third wave is hitting harder than all the previous waves. We are seeing numbers rising across the country. We are seeing a particularly dire situation in Ontario, where field hospitals are being set up and ICUs are being overwhelmed. Health care workers are telling us they are also at the breaking point. They cannot bear to see more travesty. They are seeing entire families being admitted to the ICU. With this variant, we are seeing younger people who have to be on ventilators. No longer is it just an illness that impacts more so elderly or more immunocompromised people, the variant is impacting younger and younger people. In Ontario, it is clear we are losing the race to the variant.
We have also seen across this country that the poorest communities, where we have the highest number of essential and frontline workers, are the communities with the highest rates of COVID-19 infection, but the lowest rates of vaccination. This is a serious problem.
These are tough times. We are hurting. COVID‑19 has hit all communities, and the third wave is hitting hard. Times are hard everywhere. Case numbers are rising, and front-line health workers are struggling. We must act now to protect workers and ensure better care for our seniors. We must take definitive action right now.
What did the Liberals choose to do in this budget? Budgets are always a matter of choices. They are always a matter of priorities. What does this government choose to do, and what does it choose not to do? Both of those questions are fundamental in any budget.
We have seen the pandemic hit people and impact communities differently, but the one thing that is absolutely clear is this. While working people and small businesses have suffered, the ultra rich have not only been spared suffering, they have seen their wealth increase in the midst of this pandemic. The richest Canadians, the 44 wealthiest billionaires, have increased their wealth by over $62 billion. We have seen web giants like Amazon, Netflix and Google increase their profits. We have seen large corporate grocery stores increase their profits. The ultra rich have done very well in this pandemic.
We have seen inequality grow. We have seen the inequalities that were already in society get worse, so one would think that, given the growing inequality, and the fact the ultra rich saw their wealth increase disproportionately while workers and small businesses saw their livelihoods diminish and their lives become worse, this budget would do something about it. One would think the budget would answer the question of who will pay for the pandemic and recovery, which should be the ultra rich. That is what one would have thought, but the reality is the budget makes a clear decision and a clear choice. The Liberal government and the Prime Minister have chosen that the ultra rich will not pay their fair share; instead, the burden will fall on families and workers.
This budget does not include a wealth tax. It does not include an excess profits during the pandemic tax. It does not close offshore tax havens or loopholes. It does not tackle the inequalities at all. It does not mean the wealthiest billionaires in this country will be contributing more of their fair share in any significant way. It does not do that. In doing so, the Liberal government is saying that it will continue to allow profits to be made off the backs of seniors in long-term care and that families and workers will have to continue to bear the burden.
Over the course of the pandemic, inequalities have increased, with the ultra-rich becoming richer than ever while people needing help are still struggling to get by. The crisis has highlighted the many holes in our social safety net. This budget should have helped Canadians, but the Liberals continue to favour the ultra-rich while leaving families and workers behind.
Budgets are a matter of choices. Who did the Prime Minister choose? He did not choose families, workers, or seniors living in long-term care homes. He chose the ultra-rich. The budget has no wealth tax, no excess profits tax and no action to combat tax havens.
The Prime Minister and the government have once again chosen to do nothing, allowing the ultra-rich to keep using tax havens and loopholes. The government chose not to make the ultra-rich pay their fair share. That was a choice, and in making that choice, the Liberal government chose not to help families. It did not address these issues with our tax system.
We have also noticed some good things in the budget. Without a doubt there are some positive things in this budget. The problem with the positive things in this budget is the Liberal government's track record. On the one hand, there certainly seems to be a strong emphasis on child care. In fact, it looks like it borrowed the plan we have been running on for the past number of elections. In 2015 and 2019, we ran on a commitment to bring in universal, accessible, affordable child care. The Liberals have taken from that, which is great. I would love for them to take from that and get it done. The problem is this. We have a really clear example in front of us that I think the Liberals might have forgotten about.
The fact is that the Liberals and the Prime Minister ran on universal pharmacare in 2019. They included it specifically in the throne speech, but had no qualms of completely abandoning it in the budget. They have yet to endorse their own commissioned report, which states very clearly that it should be a universal, entirely public pharmacare for all, and that is not surprising, because all the experts agree. However, the Liberal government has failed to even accept that report. The Liberals have not come out and said that they agree with the clear recommendation. Instead, they have completely abandoned it. The problem with doing that is this. When they run on something, when they campaign on something, when they put it in the throne speech and make as a priority but then completely abandon it, it makes it pretty hard to believe that they will follow through on another promise in the budget.
The sad reality is that so many people, so many women in our country are just fed up with phony promises. The Liberal government has promised universal child care for 28 years. That is three decades that Liberal governments have been in power, in majority governments, and they have not done it. Many members of the Liberal government were asked, why now? Why have they not done it before? Why are they suddenly realizing this epiphany? It makes so sense that the Liberal Party has been in power so many times over three decades and have nothing to advance this. How can Canadians believe them now?
As I just mentioned, the Liberals have been promising pharmacare for 24 years; that is 24 years of broken promises.
The budget includes a federal minimum wage increase, which is great. We ran on that. The funny thing is that when we first proposed it, the Liberal government was opposed to it and ran against it, but I will put that aside. Now the Liberals agree that it is the right thing to do. However, they promised to do it in 2019, they promised to get it done by 2020 and we are halfway through 2021. This is an easy fix. People can see things, hear the promises made and not see the action. The problem is that this one is an entirely easy thing to get done. Cabinet could get it done immediately. We are going to follow this and see if this is another example of a Liberal promise just to sound good but not do anything about it.
Herein lies the problem with the Liberal budget: The Liberals are saying a lot of nice things, but they do not actually do them. They do not actually follow through on them. The problem is that when they do not follow through on them, it is not just a void, but people who need this help get hurt.
This really aligns with what we have experienced throughout this pandemic. The Liberals often started off with something that was just the bare minimum and we had to fight tooth and nail to get more help for Canadians. Let us look at some of the examples of things that the Liberal government promised recently or delivered, and we had to fight to make it better.
When we realized that people were going to lose their jobs because of this pandemic and that it was going to be very difficult for businesses, we said that we needed support to keep people hired. The Liberals started off with a 10% wage subsidy. Put simply, that meant they were willing cover 10% of a person's salary. To cover 10% of a person's salary really will not keep that person hired. It is no significant way to keep people in their jobs. We had to fight tooth and nail and push hard. We said that it had to be more. We wrote a letter, which brought together pretty interesting allies such as the president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the president of Unifor. We said that it had to be at least 75% or higher. We fought hard and we won, so Canadians could see themselves in their jobs. We covered 75% of people's salaries to keep people employed, saving millions of jobs. This is an example of where the Liberals just wanted to do the minimum and we had to fight to get the maximum.
With CERB, the Liberals started off at $1,000, knowing that it was not enough to even cover rent for a lot of people. We had to fight hard, tooth and nail, to ensure we doubled that to $2,000, so people would be able to put food on the table. People in lockdowns who could not work would be able to pay their rent and stay in their homes.
The Liberal government completely ignored students and had no support directly for them. There were no financial supports. We listened to students when they said that they needed help because they would not be able to work this summer. We fought hard to bring in direct financial support for them.
One of the biggest tools to fight this pandemic is paid sick leave, and we fought hard to bring that in at the federal level, the first of its kind, the first new social safety net increase, but we said that there were some problems with what the Liberals have done. They did not bring in enough supports, and they have failed to fix that to date. When the Liberals do not do what they say and when they do not fix the problems we have raised, people end up paying the price and suffering.
Let us look at the choices made in the Liberal budget, who the Liberals have chosen to support and who they have chosen to ignore.
We said that we needed an answer to the question of who would pay for this pandemic, and that had to be with a wealth tax on the ultra-rich, a tax on excess profits, on the pandemic profiteering. We said that there had to be a closing of the tax loopholes.
Did the Liberal government choose to do any of those things in the budget? No. By not choosing to tax the ultra-rich, to close tax loopholes and to end offshore tax havens, the Liberal government has chosen to protect the ultra-rich, which hurts everyone else.
What did Liberals choose to do in the budget? They chose something very interesting. The Liberal government chose to extend the supports that people needed, which is great. However, we are in one of the worst parts of this pandemic, the third wave, and the Liberal government specifically has chosen to cut the amount of help people receive by $200 a month. These are people who have been laid off or cannot go back to work because of the pandemic.
Let us look at this choice. While the Liberals chose not to make the ultra-rich pay their fair share, choosing to help the ultra-rich, they chose to hurt workers who may have lost their jobs because of lockdowns this summer. Hopefully that will not happen again, although we are currently in a lockdown in Ontario. They chose to cut the amount workers, who were laid off in the summer, received, which is a choice against workers.
What about families that are struggling to pay for medications? Who did the Liberal government choose? It effectively chose big pharma over families struggling to pay for their medications. Who else benefits without a universal national pharmacare program? Big pharma.
Everyone agrees that if we pooled our resources as a country, if every province and territory that already buys medications pooled that buying power, we could negotiate better deals and get better prices. It just makes sense. When the government chooses not to do it, it chooses specifically to help big pharma. No one else benefits from that, and it hurts families that are struggling.
What about refusing to take the profit out of long-term care? The Liberals refused to that in this budget. They voted against our motion that called for this. In that choice, all they are choosing to help profitable for-profit long-term care centres, and that hurts seniors who are suffering.
When the Liberals choose not to improve paid sick leave, they hurt workers who are struggling because they cannot make the choice to go into work sick or stay home and not pay the bills. They are choosing not to help workers.
When they choose not to help students by forgiving their student debt, they are continuing to make it harder for them.
I want to wrap up with the immediate concern of the pandemic in Ontario. Right now, the Premier and the Prime Minister have both refused to show leadership to deal with this crisis, which is urgent and serious.
We need two things specifically. We need immediately, and we wanted to see this in the budget, an all-hands-on-deck approach to get the vaccines to the communities that need it most. That is a serious problem. Second, we need to immediately improve paid sick leave. All experts agree that paid sick leave will save lives.
The Premier of Ontario has failed to do anything about this. The Prime Minister has failed to act on what we said, which was to improve the paid sick leave program to get help to people. We suggested the use of the Emergencies Act, specifically a public welfare emergency, which would allow us to have more tools to get help to people. We need to do something now. The situation is a crisis. Ontario is on fire. We need to immediately improve paid sick leave and get the vaccines to the people who need it most. We need to tackle this. The consequences are dire, and we are hearing warning after warning.
We will not give up the fight for people. We will continue to apply pressure on the government to ensure it does what is necessary and right for the people of this land.