Blake Desjarlais

[Committees of the House, April 4th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, working in Alberta's oil sands granted me a tremendous opportunity. It allowed me to get my education, pay off that debt and be part of an economy I saw a future in. The reality is that, the last time I worked in that industry, I was laid off four times in the same calendar year. Why would people want to work in an industry where they cannot make ends meet because they are laid off so many times?

When I think of what our country needs, as well as about our energy needs, I often think about how vast our country is. I have worked in the Northwest Territories. I have seen the geothermal plants and renewable projects, and I know our country can sustain more renewable energy projects without going to nuclear.

[Committees of the House, April 4th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay.

Members of these companies have been making record profits. We are seeing CN Rail, for example, with huge profits of over $7 billion. We are seeing Suncor spend $3.1 billion on its shareholders. Canadians are losing their hard-earned money. I am a former energy worker, who the Conservatives often talk about supporting. Never once did the Conservatives go to the workers to talk to them about what it means to ensure the security and dignity that workers across this country deserve.

Soaring housing prices continue to make our country more unaffordable for the average Canadian. Young people are being left behind. Single parents have nowhere to go. Children are not sure what their future is going to look like. We are seeing a world that is increasingly unpredictable. Last summer, we saw record heat waves. We have seen floods. We have seen droughts. We have seen regular communities take on the brunt of this work, yet where is the support? We need to ensure that we work toward rebuilding our economy so that it works for every single Canadian, not just some of us.

I want to particularly highlight some community organizations in Edmonton Griesbach that are doing the hard work to lift up communities, such as Boyle Street Community Services, Hope Mission, and some of the Amity Houses that are spread throughout our great city of Edmonton and are working with everyday community members. They are seeing them and meeting them where they are, so that they actually have a chance to get out of poverty. Some of these families have been living paycheque to paycheque for years, not knowing when they are going to get a break.

We are also seeing huge impacts on young people and their ability to make sure that they have good lives because of student debt. Student debt payments continue to be collected by the current government. Students have paid nearly $4 billion today in student loan payments during one of the most difficult times in our country's history. Young people need support, now more than ever, to make sure that they can actually get to a point where they see that their education is going to pay off: it is not just a debt sentence where they are going to be left with an unimaginable debt load and an unpredictable future.

We need a country that will understand the issues of some of the communities we are leaving behind the most. Indigenous communities have been disproportionately affected by the poverty crisis and are disproportionately impacted by the unjust levels of profiteering by the companies that are partnered with them.

We are seeing the need to increase social responsibility for these companies, to make sure that they are paying into our social safety net and they are continuing to do the hard work. In Alberta, for example, we are seeing that some of these oil companies have forgone municipal taxes. They are not paying municipal taxes. In what jurisdiction do we allow companies not to pay basic municipal taxes? Alberta is one of them. These communities, these municipalities, these reserves and these Métis settlements need that revenue.

I talked just recently to president Herb Lehr of the Métis Settlements General Council. The council predicts that it is missing over $3 million in unpaid taxes due to these companies. That is $3 million that is not going toward the basic needs of family members in these communities: the basic infrastructure that goes into clean water, roads and building communities. We often talk about reconciliation as if it is this thing that is going to cost us billions of dollars, but we often do not even give indigenous peoples the tools they need, such as enforcement to ensure that these companies pay their fair share.

We know that a guaranteed livable basic income is something that would dramatically change our country. It would dramatically change how Canadians live. It would give people the dignity that they need to move on with their lives. It would ensure that our economy works for everyone. When consumers have the power to spend what they need in order to accommodate things such as rent, food and gas, it creates confidence in an economy that can actually continue to grow. We need to ensure that people are living with dignity, and we need a guaranteed basic income now.

When we look at this affordability crisis, we know that long-standing issues the New Democrats have fought for for decades, such as child care, dental care and pharmacare, are things Canadians need now. We are seeing an issue where young people have to go to Stollery Children's Hospital at the twelfth hour to have surgery performed on their teeth because they had no preventative measures. This is actually costing Canadians. We can tackle these issues if only we have the courage to do what is right.

When I think about the struggling families in my community of Edmonton Griesbach, we often think about those who are unhoused, but we do not often think about those in the middle: they are right on the edge of poverty and need help now. They need a huge amount of assistance. They need to see the current government working for them. They need to see their monthly paycheques increase. We need to see justice for families who are working, sometimes three or four jobs, and still not making ends meet. No one in this country should have to work more than one job in order to have a good life. That is what we are living with right now in my community. Community members are working 15- or 16-hour days because they have family members or children who need that support.

I recently visited the Nebula Academy in Edmonton. It is a not-for-profit community school that is working to make sure that marginalized communities can continue to get the supports they need. New Canadians are often abandoned when they come to Canada, with respect to receiving the education they need that is culturally appropriate and in the language of their choice. They want to see their families and religions represented in the place they call home. These are the kinds of programs that are going to go a long way toward ensuring that we have a better Canada for everyone.

[Committees of the House, April 4th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, it is my honour today to rise in this place on behalf of my neighbours and constituents in my community of Edmonton Griesbach. Folks in my community and across Canada are facing a true crisis of affordability. With the cost of living rapidly rising and workers' wages continuing to be stagnant, or even worse decreasing as they are in my home province of Alberta, where the current Conservative government is slashing the wages of hard-working public health care workers, we must do more.

During this affordability crisis, it is our job to protect our social safety net so that it truly assists those who need it most and continues to provide Canadians with the dignity they need. We are seeing more and more seniors, people with disabilities, and Black communities, indigenous communities and all person-of-colour communities across Canada struggling to make ends meet due to this crisis. We need more protection and we need the social programs to keep them going.

This is no surprise to my community of Edmonton Griesbach. We have been struggling with the affordability crisis for years. We see, for example, a study by the Edmonton Social Planning Council. Its research showed that 9,705 lone-parent families are already experiencing poverty, while an additional 10% of Edmontonians are living in extreme poverty. This makes Alberta one of the most unequal provinces in our federation, according to the Edmonton Social Planning Council. This is something that must change.

All this is happening while large companies have been making huge profits. CN Rail and Suncor have made record profits throughout this pandemic, while everyone else did their part. We all did so much for one another. We took care of our neighbours. We talked to family members. We even gave a few bucks to some of the community organizations, trying to help others. However, these big companies—

[An Act for the Substantive Equality of Canada's Official Languages, April 1st, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague for speaking so eloquently in support of this bill. I note how interesting and important it is to support minority languages across Canada, not just here in this place, but everywhere.

I come from Alberta and in Alberta we have a francophone community. Of course, in my city we have Campus Saint-Jean. We have seen significant attacks on Campus Saint-Jean over the last few months, particularly under the Conservative provincial government.

How does this bill help those minority communities to see that their language will be protected in other places, like Alberta?

[International Mother Language Day Act, March 31st, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank all those members who spoke previously in regard to this very important bill. Today happens to be National Indigenous Languages Day, a moment for all of us to truly reflect on what that really means.

Before I get into the proposal for a national mother language day to be established on February 21, I really want members to reflect on what indigenous languages truly mean in Canada. The previous member just spoke about the importance of the French language to the Québécois and how important our languages as indigenous people are, not only to our identity and to who we are as people but also to our future ideas of self-determination. It is rooted in our language. It is rooted in our culture. It is in our society.

However, Canada has a deep history of suppression of languages, whether it is the French language or indigenous languages. This is a reality facing cultures across Canada. Some indigenous people have had their languages completely annihilated. We can think of nations that in some sense, especially during the early 1800s, have been wiped out by famine and by war and in particular by actions by governments.

The United Nations estimates that a language disappears every two weeks, taking with it an entire culture and intellectual heritage—every two weeks. Let us think about that. Every single time, twice a month, a whole language is gone from our planet. Thousands of years of incubation and cultural exchange create something that is truly unique to our species, which is our ability to communicate, our ability to understand one another, and also our ability to make sure we understand our environment around us.

To put that in perspective, the Cree language, the language of the nêhiyaw, meaning Cree people, has a much more profoundly poetic understanding in that language. It actually means “star people”, people from the stars. It tells a story, and that story, if ignored, diminishes all us.

If we think about Canada and we think about indigenous languages, particularly on this day and in light of this proposed bill, we remember that there are 3,000 indigenous languages today that are endangered and at risk of extinction globally. That is 3,000 indigenous languages endangered globally. Why are they endangered? We often do not answer this question. Why? We do not need to look too far behind us in the history of not only this country but the history of imperialism, in particular European imperialism, across the world. This has truly affected how we understand culture, language and heritage across the globe.

By recognizing this day, we are welcoming diversity and inclusion to be embedded in our system and our society. I agree with the hon. members who spoke previously in support of this bill. We need to do far more, though. It is one thing to recognize the languages of cultures. It is one thing to celebrate them. However, it is an entirely different thing to ensure that we put resources, capacity and protections in place, not just here in Canada but across the globe. We have to recognize Canada's international role in the harm that we have done, the legacy of imperialism in Canada, the legacy of imperialism across the globe. It has truly done a great disservice to thousands if not millions of people across the globe.

On May 16, 2007, the United Nations General Assembly in its resolution called upon member states “to promote the preservation and protection of all languages used by peoples of the world”.

As an active member of the United Nations, Canada has an obligation and responsibility to commit to this promise. I am very pleased to see that after many attempts to have this bill recognized and have this work truly done in Canada, I agree, as was mentioned by a previous member, that now is the time we must do this. Now is the time we have to understand these implications. However, we have to go far beyond these recognitions.

We truly have to partner with indigenous people. We have to partner with other languages. We have to understand their needs. We have to understand how the community organizes, and we have to be there as true partners.

It is especially important in Canada to recognize mother languages. Indigenous people form the nations of this land. Everyone else has come from a different place. Indigenous people, their languages, their perspectives and their culture are rooted in this territory and in this land. A person cannot go anywhere in Canada without encountering a piece of land that indigenous people have stewarded. There is no group that has come from overseas that can claim this from us. This is indigenous people's land. This is indigenous people's right and we will not allow these languages to die. We will not allow our people to continue to lose so much of what we have survived on and how we have understood this world. We are not going to give up what we believe to be our vision and our self-determination for our future.

Not only does celebrating different languages promote multiculturalism and diversity, but it also encourages a rich development of oral history and a knowledge base that benefits generations to come. Western European societies often rely on intellectual institutions we call libraries, universities and colleges. Sure, those are good institutions. Indigenous people, in particular, and other nations around the world use oral tradition: oral stories. We pass on this knowledge. We pass on these traditions to our young people in a large, unbroken cycle of knowledge.

My grandparents, my kokum and moshom for example, would tell us stories about the residential school. My father would tell us stories about how afraid he was to speak his mother tongue. Can members imagine if, overnight, every single person in this country lost their mother tongue, regardless of what it was? That would have a catastrophic cultural impact on our mosaic here, but this is the true fact that is facing many indigenous nations today. They do not know whether the next generation is truly going to have the tools, the resources or the human alliance that is required of all humans to protect this diversity. If we do not take this seriously, we will lose something for the world: a perspective, a history and a reality. This is what is truly at risk when we are talking about languages.

As a proud, indigenous Cree-Métis person, I especially understand the importance of making sure we preserve oral history, and its importance in making sure our young people have a true future they can recognize themselves in. Being of this land and having indigenous cultures present in all of our communities is a good thing. Whether it is in Quebec, Ontario or British Columbia, indigenous people have marked every single inch of this territory. We cannot continue to neglect that.

Although our official languages may be English and French, they are not languages of North America. They are not from Turtle Island. They come from Europe. That is a fact. We have to recognize that true fact and preserve the identity of North America. We have to preserve our ability to understand this land and the indigenous people who have occupied it, protected it and ensured that it continues.

Today I call on all communities, here in Canada and globally, and all my fellow members of Parliament to take special pride in the linguistically rich and culturally diverse place we all live in. It is truly a gift.

I want to be able to thank my hon. colleagues for their support of this bill. I support this very critical piece of legislation and hope to see it passed swiftly.

[International Mother Language Day Act, March 31st, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for introducing such an important bill. He spoke very well on the importance of making sure that we have a diversity of languages. However, a very important point is the lack of translation. In Canada, we are used to a system of English and French, and oftentimes our indigenous languages, like my language in particular, Cree, which is a native language in Canada, have been almost put into the ground and diminished. We have seen that time and time again through government intervention.

Would the member agree that when we are ensuring that we understand mother tongue languages, we make a special place and a special recognition for the native languages of this land as extraordinary to the contributions of languages across the world?

[International Transgender Day of Visibility, March 31st, 2022]

Uqaqtittiji, I am proud to rise in this chamber today to mark the International Transgender Day of Visibility.

Trans women, especially Black trans women, have led the 2SLGBTQ movement through some of our most difficult times. They marched on the streets and demanded justice, and won our community the rights we enjoy today. Some gave their lives in this struggle. We see them just as we see all trans folks today and every day, but when I look around this chamber, I do not see a trans person in any one of these 338 chairs. This must change.

As the first two-spirit person ever elected to the House, here is my message to the trans community: “We need you here. You will face many challenges taking your seat in this place, just like I do, but I know that you will overcome them. Always remember that you belong in this House just like you belong everywhere in Canada, and always remember that you are loved and you are beautiful. Never, ever let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Kinanaskomtinawaw.

[Post-Secondary Education, March 30th, 2022]

Mr. Speaker, American student loan payments have been frozen since the pandemic started. Meanwhile, in Canada people only received six months of relief from crushing monthly payments. In fact, the federal government collected $3.2 billion in student loan payments the following year. It is bad enough that young people have had to deal with cuts from Conservative premiers during the pandemic, but it is truly shameful the Liberal government also collected billions from them. Canadians deserve better.

When will the Liberal government start tackling affordability by cancelling student debt?

[Business of Supply, March 22nd, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my hon. colleague from the Bloc for what I believe to be a remarkable speech. We have really hit, in many ways, the crux of the issue facing Canadians today, which is the fact that we are not spending enough on those who need that support. We are not even making sure that those who are profiteering are paying their fair share, and the member highlighted that there is a relationship between these two things. Those who profit and those who exceedingly use that profit to do less justice for our tax system are actually depriving those who need it most, including seniors. I was touched by the fact that the member encouraged support in the House for seniors, for example to increase OAS, which is something that constituents in my community have been calling for for decades.

I would ask the member to expand for a few moments on how valuable expanding OAS is for ensuring that seniors have the dignity and security they need while moving into this crisis.

[Business of Supply, March 22nd, 2022]

Madam Speaker, the residents of my community in Edmonton Griesbach are also suffering from this affordability crisis. It is hurting them not just in everyday rent, gas and groceries; they are also scared for their kids. What I want to hear the member talk about is how this country's economy is truly going to help these folks in a real way.

This proposal in many ways is temporary, but we know that this crisis may be long-lasting. These companies are profiting. Suncor, for example, profited by $4.1 billion, paying out $3.9 billion to its shareholders. CN Rail had $7.7 billion in profit. Would the member agree that we need to tax profiteers who have made unjust amounts of money and reinvest the money in the people who need it most as a real plan for affordability?