Madam Speaker, I am proud, as always, to stand in the House and represent the great people of Timmins—James Bay. What we have learned during this pandemic is that the pandemic has been a very hard teacher, but it has made things very clear.
For decades, we have seen growing inequality in Canada and a growing split across the economies of North America and Europe. When our veteran grandparents came back from the Second World War, they built the middle class, but we have watched their gains be chipped away by Liberal and Conservative policies favouring the movement of capital and the undermining of basic worker rights, such as pensions and security. When COVID hit, millions of Canadians suddenly did not have enough money to pay rent at the end of the month. That is how precarious people were.
We are dealing with small businesses that are not able to get by. My problem with the Liberals is they have some of the best policies in the world, in terms of what they say, but they do not deliver on them. We hear the government talking about rent support and how it is supporting people, but I am getting calls from businesses asking where that support is because they cannot survive this week. Our Prime Minister had all the time to prorogue to get away from the Kielburger brother scandal because he does not know what it is like to try to get by as a small business.
This motion is about the two Canadas that have emerged. We know that while some people lost their businesses, struggled to get by and had to rely on the payments we forced the government to provide to get people to the end of each month, other people made out like bandits.
The pandemic has been great for billionaires. We look at Galen Weston, with $1.6 billion in extra profits, while Dominion workers who were barely getting by on minimum wage in Newfoundland are now out on strike, getting nothing. This is the same Galen Weston who lives in a gated community and who the Prime Minister gave $12 million to fix his fridges. My mother calls me complaining that Galen Weston got $12 million to fix fridges, when seniors have nothing. I tell her I know, but that is what the Liberals do. Chip Wilson, a Vancouver billionaire, made $2.8 billion during the pandemic. Jim Pattison made $1.7 billion. They are making a level of income that is far beyond anything we have seen in the past.
Our motion has made the Liberals and Conservatives flip their biscuit. They think it is outrageous socialism, this 1% tax on those making over $20 million. The PBO costed it out, saying it would bring in $5.6 billion. An enormous amount of money will need to go out from the federal government to get people through the pandemic, so it is fairly reasonable to say those who are making massive excess profits in the billions could pay their fair share. I would say that 1% is not even fair. That is a steal.
What we have to talk about is breaking down this myth of the middle class and those wanting to join it, which is what the Prime Minister says all the time. If the Prime Minister's speeches were a Liberal drinking game, we would be bombed after four minutes because every time we turn around he says something about the middle class and those wanting to join it. The reality is that I grew up, and my dad grew up, in a really different middle class from the one the Prime Minister grew up in. Maybe the Prime Minister does not know what built the middle class.
What we have seen from the Parliamentary Budget Office is that the top 1% in Canada now own over 25% of the wealth. That is a staggering disconnect. What is even more frightening is that the bottom 40% of Canadians have only 1.2% of the wealth. There is something wrong in our society. This society was built on hard work, going to school, getting an education, building a business, accumulating savings and getting kids to university, but the bottom 40% of Canada only have 1.2% of the wealth.
That is not a natural state of affairs, although Bill Morneau thought it was natural. He told all the young people who are facing massive levels of student debt and precarious work, “Hey, it is the new normal.” It is not normal. It is the result of policies.
What we need to look at is how we actually recalibrate the tax policies in this country. I ran a small business. We spent most of our time just trying to figure out our taxes. It was a nightmare, yet Amazon pays no tax.
I raise the issue of Amazon because that was a line-in-the-sand moment for me. I realize there was talk and a time when it was really amazing how all of us, as parliamentarians, were coming together and working together in the pandemic, but that moment was when the Prime Minister came out and said that Canada's partner in fighting the pandemic was going to be Jeff Bezos and Amazon. Amazon is one of the most rotten companies on the planet. It made $11 billion in profit in the United States and paid no tax. It does not pay taxes in Canada. Amazon's vice-president, Tim Bray, quit because of the horrific, abusive conditions that workers were facing in Amazon warehouses during the COVID pandemic, and the Prime Minister said we should make Amazon our partner. I say that because Jeff Bezos is so far beyond billionaire status, it is hard to even classify what planet he lives on.
Amazon has been ripping the heart out of small business, and small downtown Canada. Its business model has been to underprice everything, so that during the pandemic it has been making that kind of money. However, it was the Prime Minister who reached out to Jeff Bezos and said, “Hey, you don't pay taxes in Canada.” While 19,000 Amazon workers suffered through COVID illnesses because of crappy working conditions, our Prime Minister reached out his hand to Jeff Bezos to say that was the company that Canada wanted to work with instead of local Canadian businesses, instead of local Canadian support. It is this disconnect with the billionaire class that we need to start taking on.
We talk about the issue of precarious work, with people not having savings and being stuck in debt. The crisis of workers in Canada is no longer simply working class. There is a new working class in Canada, and it is very much white collar.
My father was a miner's son. He had to quit school at 16 to go to work. My mom was a miner's daughter. She quit school at 15. My dad was really good at mathematics, so instead of getting him to go underground they got him a job at a brokerage office. When my dad was 40, he made enough money to go to university. That was our trip into the middle class. With my dad getting an education, he became a professor of economics and because he had an education, he got a job. He bought a little house. He bought one car and when it died, it stayed in the driveway for about 15 years until the local high school came and asked if it could have the car for parts. That was my dad. He was not going to buy anything else. He saved everything, so that when he died, my mom would have a proper pension. That was the middle class.
My neighbours, when we moved to Toronto, had one income, but their family went to university. They owned their home.
I look at the precarious nature of work today, and how students go to university and come out with $100,000 worth of debt. Twenty-two per cent of Canadian professionals are in precarious work situations. I have talked to people who want to become professors. They make less money than they would at McDonald's. It is the new business model. The problem with that business model is without having a society where people have stability in their income and in their savings, they end up being in situations where they cannot retire and where they live in poverty.
We have a government that makes all kinds of promises. God almighty, when it told us about rapid indigenous housing, what a scam it was to say it would be rapid. I have never seen a rapid indigenous housing plan, ever, from the Liberals. They are now saying they are taxing the web giants. That is not true. They are not going near the web giants.
Pharmacare was one of the greatest hits of 1997. Was that not during the years of the Spice Girls? I will tell my colleagues what I want, what I really, really want: I want to hear the Liberals stop saying they are serious about pharmacare and actually deliver it.
We are hearing a lot from the government, but it is not taking action. This is a simple thing to do: 1% tax on income over $20 million. That would help to pay, so that we can have a fair, and a better, society.
