Daniel Blaikie

[Health, February 7th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I did not hear a word about standing up to privatization. I hope that the minister is going to be able to do better after today's talks.

When the Prime Minister was trying to win votes, he said he would do everything he could to defend our public health care system. Now he calls tactics like privatizing our health care “innovation”. Let me be clear. Privatization does not add workers to our public health care, it takes them away from the public system. We need investments to tackle the crisis and hire more health care workers.

Will the Prime Minister send a clear message today that federal health funding cannot be used to privatize our health care system?

[Health Care, February 6th, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, as provincial premiers descend upon Ottawa to discuss health care funding, debate about health care privatization is raging. There are people who say that because there is already some private delivery in the system, we should not be concerned about there being more, but this misses the point.

We know there is for-profit delivery, like in long-term care. We saw during the pandemic that these facilities had worse health outcomes and higher death rates. The question is whether we want more of that or less of it.

Canadians should not trust the advice of Conservative governments, like the one in Manitoba, that plead poverty and call for privatization while closing emergency rooms and giving giant tax rebates. We need provinces to help develop a coordinated strategy to train enough health care providers across the entire country. Private centres hire from the same pool. We need a plan to expand that pool of workers, not a plan for discriminatory access based on ability to pay.

I exhort the Prime Minister and the premiers to pay heed as they sit down to chart a course for the next generation of Canadian health care.

[Canada Early Learning and Child Care Act, January 31st, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, one of the things the member said, which I have heard other Conservative members say today, is that the bill would impose a particular way of doing child care. They particularly reference shift work and things like that as somehow being excluded from the bill. However, I was not able to find anything in the bill that prescribes a particular time of day that child care is to be offered by the centres that may receive federal funding through this legislation or the agreements.

In fact, one of the guiding principles in the bill, at paragraph 7(1)(c), says:

(c) support the provision of early learning and child care programs and services that are inclusive and that respect and value the diversity of all children and families and respond to their varying needs

As a New Democrat, when I read that I think it is a very obvious nod to shift work and families with parents who have different types of jobs and who are underserved by the current system. The way we are going to get this done is to have a strategy that incorporates those things.

I see language in the bill that talks about the need to meet those varying and diverse needs, so I wonder if the member could please point me to the part in the bill where the straitjacket that she and some of her caucus colleagues have alluded to exists. I cannot find it.

[Petitions, January 31st, 2023]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to present a petition on behalf of many people from the city of Winnipeg who would like to see an end to fossil fuel subsidies and who would like to see the wealthy be made to pay their fair share, whether it is individuals or corporations, in order to fund a climate transition for the lower-carbon economy that respects indigenous rights and puts workers first by ensuring that investment in new infrastructure is also an ambitious job-creation program for the country, among many other things. I encourage folks to take a good look at the content of the petition for all of those details.

[Questions Passed as Orders for Returns, January 30th, 2023]

With regard to Mortgage Loan Insurance for homeowner, small rental, and multi-unit loans offered by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC): (a) broken down by type (homeowner, small rental, and multi-unit), mortgage loan insurance product (e.g. CMHC Income Property, Student Housing, etc.), province and territory, and year since 2010, how many mortgage loan insurance policies have been approved for borrowers (i) that own a single property at the time of approval, (ii) that own two properties at the time of approval, (iii) that own three properties at the time of approval, (iv) that own four or more properties at the time of approval, (v) in total; (b) what is the dollar amount of the insured lending for the mortgages in (a); and (c) broken down by year since 2010 and by province and territory, how many homeowner mortgage insurance loans were approved for mortgages on units (i) that are owner occupied without rental income, (ii) that are owner occupied with rental income, (iii) that are non-owner occupied, (iv) in total?

[Questions on the Order Paper, January 30th, 2023]

With regard to the government’s procurement of children’s acetaminophen and ibuprofen in November 2022: (a) of the units procured by the government, how many are being distributed to (i) for-profit retailers, (ii) non-profits or charitable institutions, (iii) medical clinics and hospitals; (b) what were the total costs incurred by Health Canada to approve the import of foreign supplies of acetaminophen and ibuprofen; and (c) does the government expect reimbursements from for-profit retailers for any costs incurred by the government for acquiring these emergency supplies?

[Questions on the Order Paper, January 30th, 2023]

With regard to the government’s procurement of children’s acetaminophen and ibuprofen in November 2022: did the government purchase any bottles of acetaminophen or ibuprofen directly, with the intention to resell and give those units to retailers, and, if so, what are the details of all contracts, including the (i) total amount paid, (ii) number of units procured, (iii) price per unit, (iv) signatories to the contract?

[Building a Green Prairie Economy Act, December 6th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise this evening to express my support for Bill C-235. I had done that before at second reading.

It is a bill that essentially requires federal ministers to come together to consult with provinces and indigenous peoples on a path forward for the Prairies in order to green their economy. I think that is a laudable goal. In fact, it is a goal that Canada ought to have made more progress on by now. I do think we need to be acting with a sense of urgency.

While I would say there are many more things we need to do, I do not think it hurts at all to create a framework wherein some of the coordinating conversations have to happen between various levels of government, including indigenous governments. It is a step in the right direction.

If we are going to get serious about facing the urgency of the climate crisis, though, we are going to have to get beyond talking about how to have conversations and what conversations we ought to have, and get talking about the very real projects that we need to undertake. Often in Canada when we talk about energy projects, we are talking about particular oil and gas projects. Whether that is a new extractive oil sands development or whether it is the building of a pipeline, we are going to require public investment. In the same way, incidentally, that the oil and gas industry, particularly the oil sands in Alberta, required massive public investment in the 1970s and 1980s in order to make that industry what it is, we need a comparable level of public investment in renewable energy now to set us up to be energy leaders in the future energy economy that is coming, whether some of us would wish it were not.

That is why often New Democrats are quite upset to see massive public expenditures in the oil and gas sector. That is an established sector, one which has already benefited for decades from public investment of various kinds. The opportunity cost of spending public dollars now on the oil and gas sector is real, because it means that we are not setting ourselves up to continue to be major players in an energy sector that is transforming. We see international competitors already undertaking the work not just to reduce their own emissions and green their economy, but to become experts in the building and maintenance of that very technology that is going to be the future basis of the global energy economy.

Canadians should be at that table. Canadian workers should be developing that expertise. Canadian companies should be developing that expertise. We will not be developing that expertise if we do not see government investment that is directed toward the energy sector being directed to renewable energy as opposed to going back to the well, quite literally in this case, of the oil and gas sector.

We are going to continue to extract some amount of oil and gas well into the future, because it is not just used for cars and it is not just used for home heating. It is also used for plastics. It is an important manufacturing input. To that extent, we know that Canada has to ask itself the question as to what a sustainable level of extraction is. I believe there is an answer for that.

We could work backwards from Canada's emissions commitments under the Paris Agreement and other international agreements where Canada has committed to lower its emissions, and we could talk about what a sustainable oil and gas sector looks like. It does not look like approving every project that the industry itself says is a good idea. Unfortunately, that has been the model. It does not look like when private sector actors make a major investment, as they did in the TMX pipeline, the government running out to bail them out and say, “Oh, we are so sorry your project did not work out in Canada. That is all right. Canadian taxpayers will carry the load for you. There is no risk investing in Canada, because if you make a bad investment, we are here to bail you out.”

It is particularly frustrating, because when I talk about the role of a sustainable oil and gas sector in Canada, the focus really has to be not on just extracting more and more oil and gas, but on getting more and more value out of the oil and gas that we do extract. One of the ways to do that is to increase Canada's refining capacity. We have actually seen a significant diminishment of Canada's refining capacity. Often the argument is there is not the money to build a refinery, that it would cost tens of billions of dollars to build a refinery in Canada. That is what the government says in response to those of us who would like to see more emphasis on a value-added oil and gas sector.

However, what did the government do? It found what ended up being an over $20-billion investment overnight for the TMX pipeline.

I will not be told that money is not available. The problem is that it is not available within the context of a strategic future-looking framework. It is just available as a knee-jerk reaction to the oil and gas lobbyists when they come asking for money in Ottawa. That is not the way public dollars ought to be invested in the energy economy.

We saw it again in the last budget, where the Liberals announced billions of dollars in new subsidies for carbon capture and storage. The way the politics of that works is that the Liberals lay out tons of funds for the oil and gas sector, only to be told by the Conservatives that they are not doing enough and that they do not understand the oil and gas sector, so it is a pretty nice setup the oil and gas sector has here in Ottawa.

It has a subservient Liberal government and an official opposition that, no matter how much money the Liberals pump into the oil and gas sector, is going to say it is not doing enough and that it does not take oil and gas seriously. That works pretty nicely for the industry, but it does not work out well for Canadian workers who are interested in having their children and their grandchildren be able to get meaningful employment in the energy industry as that changes.

Often, the way the public debate crystallizes is around these individual projects, whether they are the northern gateway pipeline, the TMX pipeline or energy east, and that is because the industry itself already has access to vast amounts of capital, so those companies are able to make the initial investment to raise hopes and excitement about these kinds of projects. What we need is access to capital for renewable projects.

The Canada West Foundation is not know to be a typically NDP organization. I think that is fair to say. It has a great paper out on the potential for a western power grid, something I hope folks, under the consultation framework proposed in Bill C-235, would get serious in talking about. I also hope that those same governments that come to the table under the auspices of the framework required by this bill would also put up capital to move ahead on that. There are some interesting findings that could help lower energy costs and certainly help lower emissions, but what we need is capital behind these projects to show Canadians that these things are possible. We also need to talk about the benefits of these things, not only from an environmental point of view, but also from an economic point of view. I believe that is how the conversation around climate is actually going to change in Canada as we create excitement around real projects in the same way there is excitement around real pipeline projects.

I am a construction electrician. I understand that excitement. I know what it means to look to a big project as a source of work and income for one's family, and I know that is true for so many Canadians out there. Renewable energy can be that same exciting source of potential future employment to support families, but we are always talking about it in the abstract because we have not had people come together and mobilize the capital it would take and do the planning to show the path on individual projects.

I talked about one that I think makes a lot of sense for western Canada. There are other parts of the country I can look to, which of course I will not speak to because we are talking about western Canada in the context of the bill, but I think how we shift public opinion and build the trust that has to be built with workers to effect a proper energy transition is by talking about particular projects.

The bill would not do that, and I am disappointed that after seven years in government the Liberals have not acted with the appropriate sense of urgency. They have not built excitement around particular projects that could be meaningful sources of work for Canadian workers and help us build the competency within Canada for those kinds of projects.

That is competency that we can sell not only here in Canada, but also across the world in the way Manitoba Hydro once had a very successful division that was sought the world over to help build hydro projects across the world. That was until the Tories sold it off for pennies on the dollar. However, there are ways of developing that kind of expertise, and that has a real value for us, for Canada's reputation in the world and also for Canadian workers.

That is where I hope to see the direction of government policy go. I think this at least would create some tables for conversations to happen. We are going to have to do a lot more than that, though, if we want to meet the real climate challenge that Canada and the planet are facing.

[Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2022, December 6th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for giving his speech like a Beauce. My question is about the Canada recovery dividend, which is in this legislation. It is a one-time, 15% tax on profits over $1 billion for Canada's banks and financial institutions. It is about bringing back public money that went out to companies that were very profitable. It is a really important component of getting some of Canada's largest and most profitable corporations to pay their fair share in the context of what we are living through right now. I would like to know the member's thoughts on the Canada recovery dividend.

[Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2022, December 6th, 2022]

Madam Speaker, at the end of my colleague's speech, she talked a bit about layoffs, and we know that in the fall economic statement the government was beginning to hint at the possibly of a recession early in 2023. However, we have not seen the government's much-promised and vaunted EI modernization.

I am wondering if the member wants to talk about the importance of EI reform as we head into a potential recession.