Madam Speaker, it is a privilege and honour today to rise and speak to the bill.
As we know, we are dealing with four crises right now. We have a climate crisis, an opioid crisis, a homeless crisis and of course the COVID pandemic, which we have all been battling together for over a year. Many people have been living daily with the anxiety of losing their jobs. They are worried about their health and the health of their loved ones. In the meantime, the wealthiest Canadians have grown their wealth and Canada's largest corporations have benefited from this pandemic, and we have a Liberal government that has been resistant to having them pay their fair share and contribute to the cost of the pandemic. We know this is going to fall on the backs of everyday, middle-class Canadians and the most vulnerable, as services will be cut in future years because of the government's lack of courage to make those who should pay for the pandemic contribute more.
On the other side, the Conservatives are using delay tactics to get support to Canadians. In this budget there clearly are very important pandemic supports that small businesses need. As the federal NDP critic for small business and tourism, I know all too well from talking to entrepreneurs how important it is that they continue to get supports such as the wage subsidy and the emergency commercial rent assistance program. While we were glad to see the government extend those programs through the summer, the cuts to those programs as they are slowly and gradually phased out will impact those businesses, especially in the tourism industry.
Many businesses that rely on international tourism likely will not see international guests this season. Any tourists who planned on coming to Canada have cancelled their bookings, so these businesses have been asking for the wage subsidy and the rent program, which are lifelines for them. As members may recall, these are programs that the NDP fought to have increased. The wage subsidy was initially going to be 10%, and we pushed so the government would increase it to 75%. The commercial rent program is a program for which the government took our idea, but of course it rolled out a flawed program that was landlord-driven and forgot about the tenants.
We kicked and screamed to get these programs fixed. We got the wage subsidy up to 75% and the rent program to be tenant-driven. These benefits are absolutely essential to those tourism businesses and small businesses that are going to have to go through fall and into next spring. We heard from the Tourism Industry Association of Canada at committee, and other tourism industry organizations such as the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada, that said they needed those programs to go to the spring.
While I am mentioning it, the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada has seen a cut of 83% to its core budget. At the time when we needed it most, ITAC delivered over $15 million in loans to indigenous-led businesses, because it has that intimate relationship with its member businesses. It saved over 1,900 indigenous businesses with over 40,000 employees. These are going to be the most vulnerable businesses as we come out of the pandemic.
I am encouraging the government to come back and try to save these businesses. Time is running out. They need help.
In terms of the Canada emergency business account loan, we were glad to see the government finally fix the last increase of the CEBA loan during the second wave, but businesses are saying it is not enough. They have gone through a third wave. They need more funds. They need help and liquidity to get through the summer and beyond. The repayable timeline of next fiscal year is absolutely impossible for almost any small businesses to meet, in order for them to get the rebate of one third of that CEBA loan. We are asking the government to extend the terms of that repayment at least to the end of 2025, so that these businesses have a fighting chance to get back on their feet.
The government also keeps talking about credit card merchant fees. We know that the government is in bed with the big banks, but the reality is that small businesses are being constantly ground down by the banks. We just saw the banks increase their fees for consumers and small businesses again, during a time when they are having record profits. This is completely unacceptable to Canadians. In Europe, when it comes to merchant fees and interchange fees, they are paying 0.3%. Right now in Canada, 1.4% is the voluntary rate that credit card companies say they are paying.
I have met with Visa and Mastercard. They say that it is actually not their issue and that it is the big banks that are setting the rates on the interchange fees. We have seen the big banks having record profits. Why are they not stepping up to the plate and providing some relief to small businesses and consumers? We know that merchant fees are often put on the backs of small businesses.
As members know, I can speak for a long time about small business. The other piece is start-ups. The Liberals have completely abandoned start-ups, and those who started a business after March. They may have signed leases months and months, or even years, before. They have paid their employees and their rent through the pandemic. They have a record of receipts they have paid.
There are many different tools the government could use and industry standards it could look at. They have had leases and made these payable expenses. Liberals should set some criteria to save these businesses, or we are going to lose a generation of businesses. Throughout every riding in our country, we are hearing from people who have been abandoned by the government.
As members know, the other file I carry as the federal critic for the NDP is for fisheries, oceans and Coast Guard. We were happy to see the government finally listen to our call. Members heard me kicking and screaming in the House of Commons, calling on the minister to declare a wild salmon emergency and to make this a wild salmon recovery budget.
We are happy to see the Liberals put a significant allocation to wild salmon recovery, but we still have not seen the fine details. We have heard the broad framework of what they want to use to guide them in terms of delivering that funding, but we have not had the details of how they are going to spend that money, and time is of the essence.
Also, we have not had a commitment to reconciliation with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and we need a wild salmon secretariat that is government to government with the province, with indigenous leadership and communities, the nations on the coast and the federal government working together in co-management. We know what Liberals mean by “consultation”. They check a box, then they leave and abandon communities without listening and implementing what they have been told by those communities.
The other pieces we have not seen are the transition funding supports for those that were in the salmon farm industry. The government is hopefully following through with its commitment to move away from open-net salmon farming and to support those workers, their families and the communities in which those fish farms are in. The government made the right decision on Discovery Islands, but it did not come back with a plan to support the workers. This is something the NDP has been calling for. I have been calling for it. I tabled a bill about moving away from open-net salmon farming to closed containment, and the government abandoned it. I want to see the government do something significant around that.
Friday was the one-year anniversary of the death of Chantel Moore, a Tla-o-qui-aht member from my riding who was shot by a New Brunswick police officer. She was a Tla-o-qui-aht member, and she was killed on a wellness check. I think all of us can join together in offering the family of Chantel Moore our condolences, along with the nation and the Tla-o-qui-aht tribal council, especially as they seek justice. We need to work together to ensure that no one else suffers the same fate Chantel did during a wellness check. Canada needs comprehensive police reform.
In this budget, the Liberals put forward $100 million for mental health. That is not even close to enough. They put forward $108 million for first nations policing, which is not even close to what is needed. Police are supposed to be there to serve and protect people from our communities, but instead, the federal government has not acted to address the disproportionate amount of violence indigenous people are facing at the hands of police.
I will continue, and the NDP will continue, to advocate in Parliament for indigenous participation in investigations into police violence, ongoing mental health assessments of police officers, enhanced vetting of new recruits and cross-cultural training for police forces in all levels of Canadian society. There needs to be reforms to the police act.
I can speak in great detail about many other things. There is the opioid crisis, as I touched on earlier. There is the government's blue economy. The fact is that it is completely tainted and tilted toward industry, instead of doing the right thing, which is protecting our oceans. Our oceans are critical right now, especially as we are seeing a warming planet and a warming ocean.