Charlie Angus

[Business of Supply, May 30th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I am in no way attempting to silence the hon. member. It is just that it is Tuesday and my head does hurt. He could give me some Aspirin. I am just asking him to consider the rest of us.

[Business of Supply, May 30th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I am worried about people in the stands who are having to hold their ears. Could the member keep it down so that it is at a more respectful level?

[Seniors, May 16th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, in the 2021 election, New Democrats made a promise to senior citizens that we would fight to implement a national dental care plan, and this year, that promise will be made a reality.

When I went door to door, I met seniors who told me that they could not afford to get their teeth fixed. Dental care is fundamental for health, dignity and well-being. We know that Conservatives will fight us all the way to stop seniors from getting what is rightfully theirs, but we will follow through on our commitments. However, that is just part of the job ahead of us.

Seniors are falling behind. Their pensions are not keeping up with inflation, and the government has created a two-tiered status for senior citizens. New Democrats say that those under age 75 deserve as much support as those over 75. We also need a full overhaul of the pension system, particularly for those who are still working. Conservatives may denounce pension deductions as a tax, but workers fully understand that they are a necessary investment into their retirement future.

New Democrats will always stand up for the dignity and rights of senior citizens.

[Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act, May 15th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I find it really interesting that the government deliberately excluded the tailings ponds in the Athabasca from review, because we know that just prior to the illegal tailings pond leak at Imperial Oil, the environment minister was scheduled to allow a massive release of the toxic chemicals that are in that contaminated water into the Athabasca River system.

We know from speaking with Fort Chipewyan and the Mikisew Cree that they suffer high levels of cancer. We are dealing with ammonia, lead, mercury, benzene and other contaminants, and yet the environment minister was more than willing to let this be released into the Athabasca River. These are tailings ponds that are 2.6 times the size of the city of Vancouver and are growing every day. When is the government going to actually deal with the massive level of water contamination coming out of the oil sands projects?

[Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act, May 15th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I think being a Speaker is really tough, and I want to thank you for such a wise intervention there. I really appreciate it.

[Strengthening Environmental Protection for a Healthier Canada Act, May 15th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, we know all about the need for the precautionary principle in mining communities, because we heard about “trust industry” and how we could not move too quickly or jump to conclusions for decades.

Our graveyards are full of dead young men. If one walks into graveyards in Timmins or Kirkland Lake, one will see that up to 1955, the average life of an immigrant miner was 41 years old. They died of silicosis, radon and radiation; later, they died from the diesel underground. They died from stomach cancers from the oils that were on the drills.

All the time, we were told, “We don't know how to prove this.” The way it was proven was with something called the widow's project. They went door to door to meet the widows to find out what happened in those stopes, all while industry said to trust it and that everything was fine. The precautionary principle has been paid in the lifeblood of workers and of Canadians.

[First Nations Fiscal Management Act, May 15th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I have only ever heard the Conservatives talk about oil and gas whenever they talk about indigenous. However, the Liberals are telling us about all these great projects that are going to create capital.

In Fort Albany right now, people are flying home today from weeks of being put up in hotels and community centres, because the dikes broke on the Albany River due to failed basic infrastructure, putting them at risk. We are working with the Mennonite Central Committee and True North Aid to get food hampers in. That is the reality on the ground in the communities I represent: underfunded infrastructure and having to beg to get food in, because the government has failed in its fundamental obligation to keep communities safe.

I would ask my hon. colleague: How is it possible for these communities to take economic control of their lands when they have been left in such dire straits of infrastructure poverty and a lack of an ability to control their lives?

[Indigenous Affairs, May 15th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, after ignoring 20 non-compliance orders from the Human Rights Tribunal and spending $10 million fighting first nations kids in court, the government has a new scheme. It is simply ignoring its obligation to pay the therapists who are providing first nations children services under Jordan's principle. The minister's policies are in direct defiance of the rights tribunal ruling and are threatening to put child therapists into bankruptcy. We are talking about the most fragile children in the country.

Why is the government so determined to deny first nations children access to the Jordan's principle services to which they are entitled?

[Old Age Security Act, May 11th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, as always, I am honoured to rise for the people of Timmins—James Bay to talk about a very important issue. That is the situation facing senior citizens in this country and the systemic failure to ensure that those who built this nation are able to retire and live in the dignity they deserve.

I was just speaking today with the head of the Cochrane food bank. We are attempting to get supplies of food up into Fort Albany First Nation, which has been under evacuation because of flooding. They tell us the shelves are empty. If we go into the grocery stores in northern Ontario, the bins where people used to fill up with food are nearly empty. The cost of living crisis is hitting seniors more than anyone. They have nothing to show for it, other than these incremental increases that might buy them a Tim Hortons coffee but are not going to put food on the table at this time.

We have to look at the larger picture in terms of the absolute failure we see when seniors need us. They are the people who raised us, built our society, brought us up from being children to adults; however, when need us, we are not there. I look at what happened with COVID in the privatized long-term care facilities and the absolute squalor that elders were left in and died in. It was so bad that the army was sent into Quebec in order to try to keep people alive. We send the army into disaster zones; we should not be sending them into facilities that are run by provinces to protect and to look after senior citizens.

We saw this in Ontario, where the death rates in the privatized care homes were staggeringly high. Afterwards, Doug Ford built this iron ring of protection around all those investors so that they would not be held accountable for failing to keep seniors alive during the pandemic.

I was talking to a widow today who needs to get her teeth fixed. She has a right to have dignity. She should not have to get plates put in. She wants to have her teeth fixed, but it is an $8,000 bill. We have the Conservatives filibustering and trying to stop seniors from getting dental care. The Bloc Québécois members are supporting the attack on senior citizens in this country getting dental care. I cannot think of anything more shameful than that.

I do not know if the Bloc members or the Conservatives ever knocked on a door, but when I knocked on door after door, I talked to seniors, who said to me that they cannot afford to have their teeth fixed. Some people might think this is not that important, but it is so important for their dignity and their sense of health. This is why New Democrats pushed for a national dental care plan that, this year, includes senior citizens. The Bloc members and the Conservatives can fight this all they want, but we will make sure that by the end of this year, we can phone those widows back. We can tell them the $8,000 bill they are facing that they cannot afford to pay will be paid. They deserve it, and they deserve better.

We are very interested in Bill C-319 and this issue of fixing the shortfalls in the pension, but obviously, it would not go far enough. I remember just a few years ago when Stephen Harper flew to the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he announced that Canadian seniors had it a little too good. He was going to increase the age of eligibility for the old-age pension. He did not bother to tell Canadians that. He went to tell the world's elites at the World Economic Forum. He went to tell Klaus Schwab, to whisper in his ear, that Canadian senior citizens were getting too good a deal, and he was going to raise the age.

The Liberals ran on it, saying that they were going to fight that. They said, “We are going to make sure that we restore the age.” Then what did the Liberals do in their budget? They created two classes of senior citizens. They told all our senior citizens aged 74 and under, “Tough luck, get by, it is not too bad.” They told them they had their health, and they said they were going to give a small incremental increase to those aged 75 and older.

Just before inflation hit, I was underground in a gold mine in Timmins. That is tough work, and I met a 70-year-old man working the jackleg drill. People have to be in the best health to run a jackleg drill, because it does massive destruction to the body. He told me that at 70 years old, he had to go back underground to work the drills because he could not afford to look after his sick wife.

That is the situation in Canada. To say that, because he is under 75, he does not need a top-up to his pension is an insult. It is also an insult to say that if we just top up those at 65 to where they are at 75, it will get them through in a time of high inflation, because it is not going to get them through. Any senior citizen will tell us that. What we need are much broader systemic changes to deal with an aging population and the way that we have failed. Certainly, the issue of access to dental care is an important first step.

We also need a housing strategy that works. It is not a housing strategy when the member for Stornoway, who lives off the taxpayer's dime with his personal chef, goes on about how all the gatekeepers have stopped any building. He is attacking the municipalities for being gatekeepers. That is not going to get us housing. What we need is seniors housing. We need a national plan to build seniors housing that is co-operative, reasonable housing. The Liberals promised that. We have never seen so many promises about housing, but where are they? We have not seen it. That is a systemic failure.

With respect to the inability of people to feed themselves at a time of high inflation, and the pitiful amount of money they get in old age security, is a broader, more systemic issue that has to be addressed. We have to rethink the CPP. We have to look at the ability of people, while they are working, to add to their own old age security funds so that, if they are working and saving, that fund will go with them wherever they retire. That is contrary to the member for Stornoway, who by the way has a 19-room mansion. He calls it a tax. Investing in pensions is not a tax. The Conservatives keep saying that because they do not want to put the basic funds in place to have a proper pension.

We need to look at a properly funded pension system, so I look at Bill C-319, and we will certainly support it going forward. It is an incremental step, a baby step, along a long path, but it does not get us there. What gets us there is saying that we cannot live as a society with values when seniors are out on the streets begging, which I see on Elgin Street now. There are senior citizens and widowed grandmothers begging on the streets because they cannot pay their outrageous rents or the cost at the grocery stores, as there is not enough in their pensions. I think we need a broader discussion, one that is across party lines, on how we reform CPP so people can make investments into a public pension, not a privatized RRSP. I know a lot of people who have tried to put money into RRSPs and have told me they will never be able to retire because it will never be sufficient, so we have to address those shortfalls.

We have to send an important message now to senior citizens to admit that Canada has failed them, and is failing them, but that it is not going to continue to fail them. At a time of high inflation, high costs, high rents, high medical costs and the need for access to either pharmacare or dental care, Canada needs to do for them what they did for us. They held us in their arms, raised us and took on immense sacrifices so we could be the society that we are today.

[Business of Supply, May 11th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I want to follow up on the excellent question asked by my Conservative colleague.

Toronto has a very large population from France. They are professionals, and I have spoken with a number of them who work in journalism and television. I have asked them why they come to Canada, and they say they are tired of the culture wars in France, the xenophobia and the growing alienation of outsiders.

They feel inclusive. However, the problem is that we are inviting people into the country, but we do not have housing, so then people cannot afford to live. We are failing at that. We have a real opportunity to invite people who are coming from countries where they are tired of the xenophobia and say we are a welcoming country, but we need to make sure we are able to utilize these incredible talents coming from all over the world so they can build our society.