Daniel Blaikie

[Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1, April 27th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member and I agree that the current government bears a lot of responsibility for the state of the current housing market, which is the worst that it has ever been. I think we differ in some of the ways in which we say the government is responsible for that.

I hear the Conservative leader talk a lot about how government spending is responsible for inflation in the housing market. As New Democrats, we look at housing and we see the role of massive private investment, corporate landlords that are gobbling up buildings with affordable units, superficially renovating them and jacking up the rent. We see real estate investment trusts doing the same. We see a lot of investor activity that is actually driving up prices in the real estate market. I do not see how government spending is playing a role. We know that, in fact, the government is not building enough non-market housing options, and we need to build more in order to address supply.

Can we hear the Conservatives talk about private investment activity in the housing market, the role it is playing and the things the government can do to curtail that as a way of actually getting out of the housing crisis, or are they going to continue to talk about government spending as if that is what is driving the housing crisis when it is not?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1, April 27th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I would like to commend the member for Regina—Lewvan on having done a great job reading somebody else's speech. It is always interesting when people choose to use the words of others, rather than their own words in this place.

I thought maybe the member for Regina, of all places, might have a better handle on the Mouseland story, in which, of course, the mice are working people. I take his criticisms of mice running government as being quite demonstrative of the Conservative position over the years in respect of working people and whether they should be allowed to control their own destiny, which is the point of the Mouseland story.

I know he talked a lot about inflation. He talked about fat cats. Perhaps he will know that 25% of every inflation dollar spent by Canadians in this economy has gone not just to the oil and gas industry but to the profits of the oil and gas industry. That has not been shared with workers. That $18 billion in extra expenses by Canadians has gone to the oil and gas sector, and only $650 million of it actually went into the pockets of workers.

What does he think about that?

[Copyright Act, April 27th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I just want to circle back to some of the member's reflections on the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade agreement, which I know Conservatives were concerned to see pass very quickly. Of course, this was one of those extant issues. I am wondering if he could speak a bit to how he thinks our trade partners might respond to something like this and what the consequences could be.

We know we are under some other trade agreements. Of course, CUSMA does not have the same investor-state dispute settlement provisions as NAFTA did, but I wonder if he is aware of what some of the risks are in terms of other parties. There is a nation-to-nation dispute mechanism in CUSMA, for instance. How might that be received, and what kinds of risks might Canada have to consider in moving ahead with something that makes a lot of sense for people in the Canadian economy, who should have the right to repair their own equipment?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1, April 27th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I asked earlier about the urgency of employment insurance reform. I want to talk about another facet of the employment insurance problem that Canada has at the moment, which is the decision of the government to allocate $25 billion of CERB debt to the EI account. We know that EI was not in a good place prior to the pandemic. It was not adequate to the task. The whole system had to be revamped. It was effectively run like a program and not the usual employment insurance system that premium payers are used to. That was cancelled back in September.

How does the government imagine it is going to achieve an effective modernization of the employment insurance system when premium payers are preoccupied with paying down a $25-billion debt over the next seven years instead of seeing improvements to the employment insurance program?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1, April 27th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, I just want to follow up on the question of EI. Let us face it: The budget implementation act is very light on EI measures. One thing it does is extend the pilot program for the “black hole” by just another year. When this pilot program is something that has been going on now for five or six years, I think it makes a lot of sense simply to make it permanent, rather than continuing to extend it year by year. There are also some modest changes to the EI appeal board, but there is not really anything that addresses the important changes that were made during the pandemic and cancelled by the Liberals in September.

Why does the government continue to drag its feet when it comes to this important reform as we are being told that Canada is likely heading into a recession, when employment insurance is at its most important in terms of the lives of Canadians?

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, April 18th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order, we have seen a couple of requests from Conservative MPs who, I would have to assume, were not in the chamber for the vote, despite saying that virtual Parliament is the end of democracy and that it is going to shut down debate and—

[The Budget, April 17th, 2023]

Madam Speaker, the government has been consulting on changes to the employment insurance system for seven and a half years. In the meantime, we have had a global pandemic where we know, knew and still know that the employment insurance system was inadequate to the task; it had to be completely reimagined and changed for the duration of the pandemic. The government has since cancelled those rules, saying that the pandemic is over and that we do not have a problem.

Then we experienced a period of very high inflation. Now the Bank of Canada, despite fanfare about having a different mandate in the fall of 2021, has actually not changed the mandate at all, as I said at the time. It is still an inflation-targeting mandate. That is what the leader of the Conservative Party wanted; it is what he got. Now we have Bank of Canada leadership who say the unemployment rate is too low and they need to raise it. They will actually continue raising interest rates until unemployment comes up. We have a government that continues to say it is consulting on employment insurance reform, when it has had over seven years and knows very well what needs to be done. When will it do it?

[The Budget, April 17th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, the point I take my colleague to be making there is that if we judge the success of housing policy by how much money developers are making, that is not the same as Canadians getting access to housing they can afford to live in. We need to drop this metric as the principal metric and adopt Canadians actually getting into housing they can afford.

One thing I have not had much of a chance to talk about that I want to mention briefly is employment insurance. When interest rates go up and for-profit building stops, people get laid off. Right now, they do not have an employment insurance system that they can count on to support their mortgage payments, rent or groceries for their families. That is why the Liberals had better act with a sense of urgency that we have not seen.

A major disappointment with this budget is that the Liberals continue to promise employment insurance reform, but it is not coming. They warn of a recession. That is coming; it is why we need the EI system to be fully reformed, and we need it now.

[The Budget, April 17th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for raising the issue of the housing crisis. Certainly, the people in Elmwood—Transcona are feeling the squeeze in housing, as are people across the country from coast to coast to coast. The feeling is different depending on where one is. The problems manifest in different ways, but there is no question that people across the country are feeling those pressures. That is why it was a very specific focus for me in the budget speech to talk about the housing crisis.

Recently, I was attacked in the National Post for some of the comments I made in this place. I will wear it as a badge of honour, considering some of the positions that paper wants to take on a number of issues, let alone on housing. What I found curious about the criticism was that it said I was misrepresenting the housing crisis in order to defend the Liberals, which could not be further from the truth.

My point was that the Liberals and the Conservatives have far more in common on housing policy than anybody else does. Why is this the case? It is because they fundamentally accept that housing is a commodity and that profit should be the ultimate focus of housing policy. That has been true in this country for over 30 years now since the Liberals originally cut the national housing strategy in 1993. That was my point.

We are not going to get past the housing crisis or get to a point where we finally feel we are making progress if we do not centre housing as a public good in our housing policy, instead of a commodity. My opinion is that as long as we have Liberals and Conservatives running the country, we are not going to get to that point.

Ultimately, they are very concerned about protecting profit-making in the housing industry and reluctant to accept the idea that housing is a public good or human right. While they may want to do that rhetorically, in their policy, they still do not do it. That is why a lot of housing policy is not working, even though the Liberals have done more in the housing policy space than any government since 1993. There is a reason it is not working.

What is capitalism? It is a small number of people owning the means of production and everyone else being exploited. What is happening in our housing market is that a smaller and smaller group of people own the housing, and everyone else is being exploited. Unless we can be critical of capitalism as a model, we are not actually going to fix housing policy in Canada. That was my point, and they are birds of a feather when it comes to that.

I am sorry the National Post column did not get the point originally. I hope it is much clearer now, and I am thankful for the opportunity to make that clarification.

[The Budget, April 17th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, that is certainly important. Of course, one of the other places we have seen inflation that has been really meaningful in the Canadian economy is with respect to construction and the cost of inputs for building things. Of course, one of the inputs is the cost of tools. They have not been spared the effects of inflation in a period when supply has been very tight.

I think recognizing for tradespeople that the cost of their inputs has gone up and ensuring that the mechanisms designed to provide some relief for that keep pace with inflation are important. That is why the New Democrats have been proud to also support the trade mobility tax credit, both in the budget bill and in a private member's bill, to make sure that tradespeople are getting some of the same tax treatment that white collar workers get when they run their own business.

It is also why we are very proud to have fought for and won in this budget, and we are looking for the legislation to make it true as well, the measure that working people will be represented on the board of the growth fund, which is going to invest in the new energy economy in Canada. It is really important to have workers' voices at those tables, because the transition has to happen in a way that creates good-paying jobs for Canadian workers right here in Canada. Our efforts to ensure that workers have a voice on the board that will be making decisions about the growth fund is an example of that, as is our insistence to have real conditions about prevailing wages tied to federal investment in clean tech.

There are a number of wins for workers. It is one of the differences that having the New Democrats at the table has made, and we will continue to advocate for benefits like these for workers.