Madam Speaker, today I am speaking from the traditional unceded territory of the Qayqayt first nation and the Salish peoples.
I want to start by sharing with all members of Parliament and all Canadians our deep appreciation for the frontline workers, for the first responders and for health care workers, who have been carrying us with such courage and bravery through this pandemic. We know how costly this pandemic has been. The third wave has now hit. We have lost over 24,000 Canadians over the course of the last year and a bit.
It is with an appreciation for the courage of those frontline workers, those first responders, those health care workers that I speak today about what has been a traditional right of passage in Parliament. I have been on the finance committee for a number of years, so I have been through a number of different versions of this, where the finance committee goes out and does pre-budget consultations across the country.
This year, due to the pandemic, these consultations were conducted largely by email and on Zoom. In previous years, we have seen, regardless of whether the administration was Conservative or Liberal, members of the House of Commons finance committee going out across the length and breadth of our country and having hearings on what the shape and form of the budget should be.
The budget, after all, is really the seminal document for the course of the year. The budget document is the most important document, and the budget implementation act is the most important legislation that we see over the course of the year.
Every year we see Canadians, organizations and communities step up to offer a very compelling vision of the future of this country. We have seen municipalities across the length and breadth of this country, and I would like to speak both to the City of Burnaby and the City of New Westminster, which spoke over the course of the last year to the finance committee.
We see as well organizations, seniors, groups of students, workers and labour organizations all stepping forward and putting an enormous amount of time into making sure that the submissions they provide and the statements they make to the finance committee fully communicate the importance of a shift in our budget orientations and essentially a shift in our values. People with disabilities step forward as well to talk about their vision of the country.
This has been happening for years. We have Canadians stepping forward in good faith, providing remarkably detailed suggestions and a vision for the future of our country. Every year, whether it is a Conservative administration or a Liberal government, we see the finance committee take all those great suggestions and documents and leave 90% of them on the cutting room floor.
We see in the budget even less reflection of the importance of what we need to do as a country moving forward. Often we will hear Liberals and Conservatives say that we do not have the money for this, and ask how we can get the money for these compelling issues that people are bringing forward, compelling solutions that would make a difference in Canadians' lives.
Permit me for a moment a detour around the issue of how we pay for this compelling vision that the vast majority of Canadians share. I have been in Parliament since the Conservatives and the outset of the financial crisis in 2008-09. They did not think of small businesses, did not think of people, workers or families. Their first thought was to the big bankers and bank profits, so they waded in with an unprecedented, at that time, $116 billion in liquidity supports for Canada's big banks. The first priority of the Harper Conservatives was making sure that the banking sector maintained high levels of profit, so $116 billion was put forward for the banking sector.
We now fast-forward to this pandemic, a crisis that we have not seen certainly since the Second World War, arguably a crisis, a pandemic of this nature that we have not seen in a century. The first thought of the Liberal government was not families, small businesses or communities. The first thought was maintaining banking profits. Therefore, the first and most important decision financially that the federal government took under the Liberals was, this time, $750 billion in liquidity supports. That is three-quarters of a trillion dollars showered on Canada's big banks to make sure that their profits were maintained.
There is no doubt that when we raise those figures with Canadians, they find it astounding that the same members of the parties that are constantly asking “How do we pay for this?” are willing to turn on a shower of money without precedents, both in the previous financial crisis and now during this pandemic.
The words “How do we pay for these things?” ring hollow when we compare the amount of money that both Liberals and Conservatives have been prepared to put forward to make sure that the banking industry is going well, but we will talk about some of the other items they have showered money on in a moment.
The point is that we have Canadians of good will coming forward each year and putting forward a compelling vision of this country that ends up on the cutting room floor because Liberals and Conservatives prefer to go to Bay Street and make sure that Bay Street's vision of the country is maintained, rather than the Main Street vision that so many Canadians share.
This is not just about liquidity supports for the banking system. This is also about the $25 billion that flows to tax havens every year. Over 10 years, that is a quarter of a trillion dollars, $250 billion, that the Conservatives and Liberals have injected into the system to help this country's ultra-rich. That is the difference between what the vast majority of Canadians see and what they get, whether it is the Conservatives or the Liberals in power.
What is the compelling vision that Canadians brought forward? We saw this from witness after witness in the hundreds of briefs that we received from across this country: Canadians want to see the ultrarich actually pay their fair share. The $25 billion per year that goes to overseas tax havens is tax dollars, as the Parliamentary Budget Officer has indicated so carefully. That is a quarter of a trillion dollars over the course of the last decade. If we couple that with $750 billion for the banking sector, we see that a trillion dollars has been granted in a heartbeat to the ultrarich.
What Canadians want to see is an end to those practices, an end to Canada being perceived as and very clearly indicating that it is a home for those who want to take their money overseas and not ever pay a cent of taxes.
Canadians want to see a wealth tax. They believe that as we have gone through this pandemic, the ultrarich should actually pay their fair share of taxes. The Parliamentary Budget Officer and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives have indicated that this is a $10-billion-a-year investment that Canadians could receive for things like resolving the homelessness crisis, ensuring that we have in place public universal pharmacare, ensuring that we actually adequately fund our health care system. We are looking to put in place a national child care. It has been promised for 30 years and is still being promised by the Liberals, but as yet they have not made any concrete steps.
These things are all indicative of a broader vision that Canadians have, a vision of building a country where nobody is left behind. As we know, last week the Parliamentary Budget Officer also indicated that a pandemic profits tax would bring another $8 billion. That is enough to resolve the homelessness crisis in our country and ensure that everyone has the right to housing and a roof over their head at night.
Previous governments had a better vision and were more in tune with where Canadians are. In the Second World War, we had an excess profits tax. We ensured that everybody was in it together.
Those taxes, the wealth tax and profits tax, served to fuel our fight against fascism and Nazism and to win it, and to ensure that when women and men in the service came back home after the Second World War, we could make unparalleled investments in housing, transportation, health care and education.
That is not the vision the Liberals and Conservatives put forward today. In the pre-budget consultations, we see a scant reference to tax justice, except in the NDP dissenting report. We see a scant understanding of the vision that so many organizations and Canadians provided to the finance committee as a road map to follow, not something to be rejected because Bay Street wanted to have a free ride.
What are the other compelling components that were part of this vision Canadians brought forward?
Here is what Canadians wanted or would have liked to see in the budget that was just tabled: every person's right to affordable housing, pharmacare and a social safety net that is not full of holes. Every one of those elements is extremely important, and that is the vision Canadians share.
Over the course of the last year, we have seen the cuts in real terms. I fault the Conservatives and Liberals equally on this. They have, over time, simply not provided the needed funding for health care. As a result of that, we see our health care system struggling under the weight of this pandemic. That is a vision Canadians put forward to the finance committee, to ensure we had adequate funding for health care, to ensure that these cuts, which have been gradual but nonetheless very present, would get reversed.
Canadians had a compelling vision also that they shared with the finance committee of applying home care. We know that in providing supports for home care we save enormously in the health care system. It is much better to have seniors provided with the support in their homes rather than in a hospital bed at a much greater cost and a much lower quality of life in one of the nation's health care centres.
Ensuring home care, public universal pharmacare and dental care are put into place are all part of a vision that Canadians share. When Tommy Douglas brought forward and forced a former government back in the 1960s to put in place universal health care, his dream, and the dream of Canadians, always was to expand and ensure we had, as the member for Burnaby South, the national leader of the NDP, said so compellingly, “from the top of our head to the soles of our feet” health care that would cover everything. That was the vision Tommy Douglas brought forward, repeated now and amplified by the member for Burnaby South. It is a vision the vast majority of Canadians share.
A few years ago Canadians from all walks of life, all backgrounds and creeds were asked who their most famous Canadian in history was, their favourite Canadian, the one who best typified Canadian values. They overwhelmingly chose Tommy Douglas. They share this vision of ensuring that we have a full public and universal health care system that includes all the other elements, pharmacare, dental care and home care as well.
At a time now, when 10 million Canadians have difficulty paying for their medication and have no access to a drug plan during a pandemic, any weakness in health care, like not being able to fully pay for one's medication, can lead to inestimable tragedy. This means those people are more vulnerable. At all those times, it strikes again. I think the number of Canadians who massively support public universal pharmacare is at a rate of more than 80%.
For the Liberals and Conservatives to have said no, to have voted down the Canada pharmacare act at the end of February is something that strikes at how hypocritical it is when Liberal and Conservative MPs say that they will listen to this vision of tomorrow, but will reject it and not provide any supports for it. However, for bankers and billionaires who want to take their money overseas, they will ensure everything is in their favour so they can accomplish that.
When we look at the overall situation in our country, we know that Canadians are struggling to make ends meet, that more than 50% of Canadians are $200 away from insolvency on any given month. We know that people with disabilities struggle. Half of those people have to go to food banks and half of them are homeless. A growing number of homeless across the length and breadth of our country are people with disabilities, yet the Liberal government showed alacrity in providing $750 billion in liquidity supports for banks within four days of the pandemic hitting.
We should contrast that with the fight that the NDP had to undertake for months to get a one-time $600 payment to people with disabilities. Even in that case, the Liberals refused to provide it to everybody with a disability. Let us contrast that $750 billion for Canada's big banks and that $600 for about a third of Canadians with disabilities, who are struggling with the pandemic as they have had to struggle in their everyday lives. Again, the statistic is something that needs to be absorbed by all of us. Half of those who go to food banks to make ends meet are Canadians with disabilities. Half of them are homeless.
The tens of thousands of Canadians who are homeless across the length and breadth of our land are people with disabilities, yet the finance committee report does not reflect the urgent nature of putting in place something like a guaranteed livable basic income or provide income supports for people with disabilities. There is no reflection of that. We have, instead, and the budget confirmed a study that would take a number of years and would lead to nothing.
In the case of an urgent need for people with disabilities, not only did the finance committee majority not step up but the Liberal government, in its budget, did not step up at all. We are seeing an increasing inequality that is profoundly disturbing.
Currently 1% of Canadians hold more than a quarter of all the wealth in Canada. It is clear that 40% of Canadians are sharing almost nothing because of the alarming growth in the rate of inequality. For their part, Canadian billionaires saw their wealth grow to $78 billion during the pandemic. This creates an enormous gap between the needs of Canadians and what the governments, whether Conservative or Liberal, provide to the public.
What should the finance committee pre-budget consultation really have included? It should have accurately reflected the views of Canadian organizations from coast to coast to coast. It should have set out that compelling vision of ensuring that we would build a country where every single Canadian would matter, where nobody would be left behind. It should have put in place public, universal pharmacare, not promise it for 30 years, and universal child care. It should have ensured there was a right to housing for all Canadians. It should have put in place a guaranteed livable basic income. It should have ensured the needs of Canadians, regardless of their backgrounds, regardless of the region they live in, would be met. That would have been a finance committee report that we could all stand behind and that would have reflected where Canadians want Canada to go.