Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.
The NDP support the motion because, unlike Conservatives and Liberals, we believe that every Canadian deserves to live with dignity. This callous and cruel Liberal government does not. This patriarchal vision is how the Liberals govern. They hoard and keep resources for themselves, along with their corporate friends and allies, leaving Canadians behind. Most obvious in this patriarchal culture is the cruel perpetuation of the oppression and abuse of indigenous peoples.
On the day after the day to take time to reflect on truth and reconciliation, the calls for justice for murdered and missing indigenous women and girls are still unmet, and women continue to go missing. The killing of indigenous people by RCMP and law enforcement over the past months led to an emergency debate in the House a couple of weeks ago.
Genocide of indigenous people in Canada is well documented. For women, it was about erasing them through death and enfranchisement. Their legal rights, identities and connections to their communities were targeted based solely on their gender, and that continues today. I recently raised in committee a report, which was presented to metro Vancouver-elected officials many years ago, called “Red Women Rising”. The indigenous presenters from the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver said that no indigenous woman should be homeless on her own land, yet that is what is happening today.
Conservatives are no better. Racist John A. Macdonald and the Conservatives created the Indian Act and residential schools. Macdonald is quoted as saying this about his Indian agents: “the agents as a whole…are doing all they can, by refusing food until the Indians are on the verge of starvation, to reduce the expense”. Reducing expense has always been the will and culture of the House when the NDP were not within it. The NDP is the only party that believes everyone is equal in this country and that everyone deserves to share in its abundant resources.
Women and children have always been the targets of white patriarchy and the lack of government investment. Today, when we talk about old age security, it too is rooted in the vision, shared by the Liberals and the Conservatives, of controlling and defining the family. Women are affected by low pensions because the House decided that they should stay home, should not be part of employment insurance, should not be working outside of the home, and were not able to earn an equal income to men. Now, 75 years after the Employment Insurance Act was put into place, women do not have the same rights as men. Women are affected by low pensions because they are not able to earn an income equal to that of men. They work in the not-for-profit sector and in caregiving, which pay much less. Do members know why? It is because they are women's careers, according to patriarchy.
I think about those caregivers, who had reduced earning potential and are now affected by a reduced OAS because they could not earn the same income as a man. I think about the 65- to 74-year-olds who the Liberals have decided do not deserve to have the same pension, do not deserve the measly $73 more that these Liberals are refusing them. They have to wait until they are 75 for that extra $73.
Women took the time and off-ramped their careers to stay at home and raise their families because it was so discriminatory out there in the workforce. My own mother tells the story of when she was pregnant and working in a doctor's office. She was told to rest every day at lunch and had to go and lay down. After her tummy started to show a bump, they told her she could not come to work anymore.
I think now about caregiving and how caregiving has come around. We now know that many people who are aged 65 to 75 are actually working in care homes, caring for elders, and then doing unpaid care at home. The Liberal government thinks that 65- to 75-year-olds should be at work. We did not want them at work in the forties, fifties and sixties, even in the seventies, but we want them at work now. In 2024, we want them at work. It is not acceptable.
StatsCan recently did a study of employment by choice versus necessity for seniors. It broke it up by those 65 to 75 and 75-plus. The Liberals actually did a study on why one should stay at work when one is 65. Through this study, they found that 20% of seniors aged 65 to 74 worked due to necessity. That is good news for the Liberals because now they can say that we need to stay at work, that, because they have made housing and food so expensive, they want us to stay at work.
For immigrant seniors, that percentage is even higher. I will take a moment here to say that the most at-risk people aged 65 to 75 are men who rent. They need to stay at work to keep their housing. It is an absolutely cruel and callous housing policy of the Liberal government's, and the Cons are worse on housing. They lost 800,000 affordable housing units and they want the power back. Forget it. We cannot afford to lose another 800,000 units of housing.
The Cons do not care about people. They voted against dental for seniors. I was just at a dinner this weekend at a church. There was a number of people who approached me to thank me for the dental care program. They have actually been able to get their teeth fixed. The Conservatives are voting against diabetic medication. Have any of them ever had an aging parent with diabetes who cannot afford their medication? It is life-threatening, yet they vote against pharmacare. They voted to deny pensioners aged 65 to 75 their hard-earned pensions while they can take theirs at 55. These Conservatives and Liberals, sitting MPs, when they leave the House, will be able to take their pension at 55.
I think about the leader of the Conservative Party, who has a whole diatribe about pensions right now. That member would take pensions in the millions and has the audacity to come in the House to say that he is not going to feed kids, not going to give us any diabetic medication and not care if we live in a tent. It is not just that. This is gross and sickening: in B.C., the Conservatives are taping people living in tents and putting it out on social media for their own gain. It is absolutely sickening. The Cons want people living in poverty so that they can gain power.
I want to talk about this bill and the royal recommendation needed. I totally agree. The callous and cruel Liberal government would not give a royal recommendation for the Canada disability benefit. How many times have I tried to get the government to provide an adequate income for persons with disabilities with the Canada disability benefit, and it said no? Do members know what the minister and the parliamentary secretary said to me over and over again? They said to keep pushing. It is really shameful. Why does the government need to be pushed for people to live not in poverty?