Adam Vaughan

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2, November 29th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the new member is a good, young speaker in the House. I used to joke that his parents perhaps read too much Ayn Rand to him as a bedtime story, but he protested and said that he did not get that until high school. However, maybe it is Adam Smith, but he did not read the right Adam Smith and only read Wealth of Nations and not Smith's very good book on morality and the need to be socially progressive.

Then I heard him talk like Tony Blair today about finding the middle way, and I thought, “My goodness, I really have this guy wrong.” However, with the climate change numbers he cited, he claims that the Harper government reduced greenhouse gas emissions by not doing anything and simply asking industry to voluntarily cut emissions. What we know to be absolutely true is that the global recession was one of the most significant contributors. In fact, the Tories liked the global recession so much they tried to start a second one all on their own in the last year of their government. They almost did it, until we had the election, and then we changed course.

The reality is that Ontario, which accounts for about a third of Canada's economy, reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 40%. That 40% reduction was almost entirely due to the elimination of coal plants, which the party opposite protested and said that we needed more coal and could not run a country without it. When the member opposite realizes that it was the elimination of coal, a global recession, and the progressive implementation by cities across the country of greenhouse gas reductions, will he finally abandon this notion that somehow Stephen Harper did anything about greenhouse gas emissions other than complain that doing something was a headache for him?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2, November 29th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. What I just said is true and to suggest that it is not is to suggest that I am not telling the truth, which is to say that I am lying. I would ask the member opposite to withdraw that.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2, November 29th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, it is not really a question of whether the glass is half full or half empty. Regardless of how much we take out of it, it is full. I am not thirsty, so I will not take a sip of it right now.

The reality is that the national housing strategy, which is a $40-billion investment over the next 10 years, is a re-profiling of the investments we have set to make and we now have signed bilaterals with the provinces to lock it in and deliver it.

What the member opposite fails to understand and what his criticism continually highlights is that he actually has not read past budget documents. If he had, he would know that in 2016, we invested $5.73 billion in the housing system. We did that by doubling our transfers to the provinces and tripling our funding for homelessness. That $5.7 billion is not in this budget implementation plan because it was in the previous one. We are not going to do it every time just to make the member happy.

This $5.73 billion, I might add, is four times more than the party opposite promised in its last campaign, a party that thinks the housing crisis started yesterday, apparently. Its plan for a budget this year was to put zero dollars into affordable rental housing and only $10 million toward homelessness, whereas we have $100 million and $5.73 billion.

Could the member opposite please explain to me why he thinks last year's budget implementation budget should be debated today instead of the one in front of us?

[Employment Insurance, November 27th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, of course our government takes this responsibility seriously. That is why we have introduced so many reforms to strengthen and broaden EI support for vulnerable Canadians as they deal with illness, in particular. We empathize with the particular situation my colleague has raised and are doing whatever we can to enhance employment insurance to better reflect these sorts of specific needs of Canadians.

The reality is that families and workplaces are changing, which means that employment insurance must also change.

That is why we have been working very hard over the past two years to make a number of these benefits more flexible and more inclusive. My colleague can rest assured that we are doing everything we can to deal with these realities and to help Canadians at every stage of their lives. As I said, more change is coming. We understand the need to support Canadians and EI is an important tool to do just that.

[Employment Insurance, November 27th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, as the Prime Minister has said and others have repeated, it is hard to hear stories about Canadians suffering.

I am aware of the financial difficulties faced by Canadians suffering from a long-term illness or injury and their families. There are support measures available to them.

Of course, there are employment insurance programs that can provide support through sickness benefits. When eligible Canadians are unable to work, they can turn to these sickness benefits for support. These benefits also allow them to take time to rest and restore their health, so that they can return to work in better condition without having to worry about their financial situation. Sickness benefits are designed as a short-term income replacement measure for temporary work absences. They provide 15 weeks of income replacement for Canadians who leave work due to short-term illness or injury.

That said, I know that some sickness benefits claimants exhaust their 15 weeks of benefits before they are able to get better and return to work. We are sensitive to their plight. I want to remind the House that EI sickness benefits are actually a complement to the range of other supports that are also available for longer-term illness and disability. That support includes the Canada pension plan disability benefit, as well as benefits offered through private and employer insurance, and supports provided by the provinces and territories.

Improving the EI program is one of our government's priorities. Last year, we announced the creation of an EI benefit for family caregivers of adults for a maximum of 15 weeks. It also allows eligible family caregivers to provide care or support for an adult family member who is seriously ill or injured. We also announced that immediate and extended family members of children who are critically ill will have, for the first time, access to a new benefit previously only available to parents. Additionally, medical doctors and nurse practitioners are now able to sign El caregiving medical certificates.

This change will simplify the administrative process while allowing Canadians to focus on what really matters: being with their loved ones.

Lastly, budget 2018 announced that the government would extend working while on claim provisions. This again blends in with our sickness and maternity benefits to support Canadians when they need help. This provision came into force in August 2018 and allows Canadians recovering from an illness or injury to have greater flexibility to manage their return to work and to keep more of their El benefits.

These are just a few of the real differences we are making in the lives of Canadians. Our government is firmly committed to modernizing the El system to better reflect the needs of hard-working middle-class Canadians. Our work is not done, but we are changing the system to be more accommodating, more sensitive and, hopefully, more supportive for Canadians in need.

[Housing, November 27th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad to report that for many Canadians, the wait is over. The 14,000 new housing units are a start. I agree, we need to do much more. The national housing strategy, with the co-investment fund and other investments, is poised to do just that.

The challenge we have is that it took us 25 years to build the crisis. Our party was part of the problem, in the early nineties, when we made significant cuts to the housing program.

People like Claudette Bradshaw invested her time and energy in changing course and delivering the homelessness partnering strategy program from this side of Parliament. There were people like John Godfrey, who resuscitated and reinitiated federal investments in housing, and Bill Graham, who refused to let the operating agreements expire in cities like Toronto, in particular for co-ops. All these Liberal members also helped start to rebuild the system. Quite clearly, by the time I stood for the by-election, the work was not nearly as complete as it should have been.

This government took office and invested $5.8 billion immediately. Those dollars are the dollars producing houses in places like B.C. now. We have now reprofiled the dollars to make them more effective, over the next 10 years, with a $40-billion investment and good, strong bilaterals. I am proud to say that British Columbia was one of the first provinces to sign a bilateral, and that means 10 years of runway for housing to be constructed in that province, and that will turn things around, hopefully. If not, we have—

[Housing, November 27th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member opposite for bringing that human story not just to Parliament but to all of Canada through Parliament. The challenges facing communities across this country, as they relate to homelessness, are profound. Housing and homelessness are partnered in this challenge.

We have done several things to support governments like the B.C. government and others, to try and turn the situation around with a historic investment in housing, which is not just the $40 billion over the next 10 years, but also includes the $5.8 billion put in our first budget, which are the dollars that are being spent by the provincial government in B.C. so effectively. However, more has to be done.

Part of what also has to be done is that we have to understand that the story that was just told to us comes from rural Canada. Rural Canada has housing and homeless challenges as well. When the previous government identified 61 designated communities, it kind of forgot rural Canada and imposed the same rules on rural Canada that were imposed on urban Canada. In other words, the definition of what constituted chronic homelessness was exactly the same as what was designated in major cities like Vancouver or Toronto.

The challenge here is that rural communities, especially northern rural communities, experience homelessness differently, women experience homelessness differently, women in rural communities experience homelessness differently, and seniors who are women in rural Canada experience homelessness differently. The notion that the woman who was just described would have to spend six months living on the street before a federal program would even contemplate supporting this individual, is obscene. It is wrong.

The changes that we have made to the program allow for the HPS, the homelessness partnership money which is now renamed as “reaching home” to work in preventative strategies. One of the things we are trying to get to, as shown in a good study coming out of London, Ontario, is the role that hospitals play in projecting people into homelessness. The right to housing is going to be realized when governmental organizations that provide provisional housing do not simply swing the door open to say, “Good luck. I hope you find housing out there” but actually have a responsibility before discharge to make sure that people have a place to call home, that their rent is secured and they are attached to housing systems that can realize their housing needs and, thus, respect their human rights.

This is the change to “reaching home”. As I said at the beginning, it is intertwined with an approach to housing that also is building new housing now. We have built 14,000 units of housing since we took office. We have repaired 156,000 units of housing and our support has reached into more than a million homes across the country.

Even though we have put these large numbers in play and even though we invested before the $40 billion and have reprofiled the money in that $40 billion investment, when we hear stories like this, we know we have to work harder and deliver more because no senior, no woman, no person in rural Canada, no person anywhere in Canada should be in a situation where they find themselves paying the sorts of rents that were described and not having supports of meals, social services and community. That is just unacceptable.

The national housing strategy is a bold new beginning on the housing front. More needs to be done and we have to make sure that when we act, we act in recognition of the complexity of this issue right across Canada.

As for the issue of indigenous housing, the government is currently engaged with national indigenous organizations, the Métis, the Inuit and first nations. We are also in the groundbreaking moments of a national urban housing strategy to fulfill the last chapter of the national housing strategy to make sure that all Canadians get the home they deserve.

My thanks to the member for the story she told. I assure her that help is on the way because help has already arrived in places like B.C. in a strong partnership between our government and the provincial government in Victoria.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2, November 27th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I am going to focus my question on the member's housing analysis for a very simple reason. Not one single fact was presented in the argument he made to the House.

The NDP will complain that if we spend money this year, we should have spent it last year. If we spent money last year, why are we not spending it this year? If we spend it over 10 years, why are we not spending it all right now? If we are spending it all right now, what are we going to do for the next 10 years? It has an argument against any action any government takes ever.

When we take a look at what the NDP promised, if it had been elected to government this time, it would have spent zero dollars on affordable housing in the year we are currently in. It is in the platform. Actually, it would have been three years in a row of zero dollars on affordable housing, not a single penny on new housing.

On homelessness, the issue the member spoke to specifically, which he thinks is suddenly a crisis, quite clearly, the drafting of the platform last time did not see it that way, because there was $10 million a year. Liberals are spending $10 million in Vancouver and Toronto alone in new dollars and $100 million across the country. We doubled those funds. The only thing worse than the argument just presented was the NDP platform presented to Canadian people in the last election.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2, November 27th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite was looking for an example of a targeted investment supported by the federal government that is driving new work in Oshawa related to the auto industry. Is the parliamentary secretary aware that as part of our $5.6 billion investment in the auto sector, GM selected Oshawa for the site of its new electronic vehicle research centre? Close to 1,000 engineers have been hired in southern Ontario. The member for Milton says that engineers do not matter and are not part of the ecosystem of the auto sector. She dismissed them as good jobs and as a remedy for some of the unemployment challenges in the country. Is the parliamentary secretary aware that these investments are being made in Oshawa today and set the stage for retooling the plant that was closed yesterday?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 2, November 27th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to have the opportunity to ask my colleague opposite a question.

The purpose of my question is simple.

The member opposite complained that there was not enough investment to back up the strategy or move forward some of these critical social issues in order to achieve them. I will take housing as an example, because I have often heard the opposite side say that it all comes after the next election.

The member opposite knows, because she complained that in the first budget the money was too little to solve the problem. I agree, we needed the full $40 billion on top of the first investment. However, in our first budget, we tripled transfers to provinces and that money is building housing now, supporting housing now and renewing housing agreements now. We doubled the money that was going to homeless organizations that are fighting homelessness. We have now added an additional $40 billion on top of that, and reprofiled the money to be a little more flexible so that it can, in particular, support women and children across the country. In other words, the national housing strategy is not a 10-year, $40-billion program, but actually closer to $55 billion over 14 years, if we take into account the dollars announced before we reprofiled the money.

Would the member not agree that, from the minute we took office and the first budget we passed right through to now, we have invested well beyond $40 billion? Will the member also agree that those dollars are being spent as we speak?