House of Commons photoLost his last election, in 2025, with 18% of the vote.
Ethics July 20th, 2020
Mr. Speaker, the WE scandal is another example of the Liberal government saying all the right things in public, but working for its close friends behind closed doors.
If the Liberal government really wanted to help students, it could use existing programs.
Will the government admit today that the point of this scandal was not to help students, but rather to help its close friends?
Further COVID-19 Measures Act July 20th, 2020
Madam Speaker, I want to start by framing the response to COVID-19. In the response by the Liberal government so far, what we have seen is that at every step of the way it has tried to do the minimum possible. The Liberals have tried to do the least possible, and at every step of the way we have pushed and fought and demanded more for people. That has been our experience throughout COVID-19. We have been demanding, fighting and pushing the government to deliver more for people.
When we look at every step, whether initially when the government proposed EI as being good enough to help Canadians, we said no, it was not going to cover all Canadians who needed help and so we fought and pushed to get the CERB. Initially, the Liberals were going to give $1,000 to Canadians, and we had to fight them on that. We had to demand, we had to negotiate and push hard to get $2,000 for Canadians. The Liberals were just not going to do it, but only the minimum possible, and we had to fight every step of the way.
The Liberals were willing to cut off people in July. They were going to cut off people from CERB without any help in place for the millions of Canadians who could not go back to work. We were willing to go to the brink to make sure that CERB was extended for Canadians in need.
Now, we have a bill in front of us that outlines some supports. Again, these are supports that we had to fight for throughout the pandemic.
From the beginning of the pandemic, Canadians living with disabilities were completely ignored. Some of the most desperate people living in some of the direst conditions were completely ignored by the Liberal government. We had to fight and to say that Canadians living with disabilities needed help and needed it now. We forced the government to promise to deliver that help. Two months later, there was still no help. Finally, today, we are seeing some legislation that would bring in some help for Canadians living with disabilities, but it is not going to cover everyone. That is a problem, and we are going to continue to fight to make sure there is help for everyone, for all Canadians living with disabilities.
We also fought to improve the wage subsidy. We knew that businesses needed some help and that we needed to connect workers to those businesses, and so we fought for some improvements to the wage subsidy program that would help workers and get people back to work. We are proud of that work.
Every step of the way, the Liberal government wanted to do the minimum possible to help people. That is why we pushed the government to increase the assistance it was offering to Canadians.
As for the bill tabled by the government, we were the ones who pushed it to support people with disabilities. We are proud to have achieved this result.
Again, however, the Liberal government is not helping everyone who has a disability. We will continue to fight for them and stick up for them, to ensure there is help for every person living with a disability.
We also pushed the government to make sure the wage subsidy would cover more businesses. We wanted to ensure that more people had access to this program and that everyone had access to work.
However, this is not enough. There is still so much more that needs to be done. We have seen again and again a theme emerging from the Liberal government, one in which there are lots of empty words and a lack of concrete action. Therefore, again Canadians are faced with the reality that at the end of August, CERB will be discontinued. For millions of Canadians who have no work to return to, this is a scary situation. They are worried and afraid.
That is why we are calling on the government to put in place a permanent change to EI. EI does not serve all Canadians; it only helps about 40% of Canadians. We need to make sure that EI is modified so that everyone who needs help gets that help. That is what we are going to fight for.
CERB will be discontinued at the end of August. When that happens, many people will be in a precarious position. They have no idea what lies ahead. That is why we need to improve EI to make sure that everyone who needs it can access that support.
In addition, if we look at the impact of COVID-19, it has been felt most by women. Women have borne the brunt of COVID-19. We see that in some really shocking numbers. Right now the participation of women in the work force is the lowest it has been in 30 years. This is a chilling statistic and something that creates great worry and fear for all of us.
What we need to do is to make sure that if COVID-19 has disproportionately affected women, we have a solution that recognizes that women have been the most impacted. That is why we are saying there can be no recovery from COVID-19 without child care. There can be no recovery without addressing the inequalities impacting women.
Not only do we need child care in place, but we are also seeing the impact of COVID-19 on schools. Education has to be considered a human right. Of course, there are jurisdictional issues, but the federal government has to step up and bring dollars to the table, funding to the table, to ensure there is adequate, affordable child care, as well as access to schools and education for everyone in this country.
It is not enough to say that the Liberal government is a feminist government or that the Prime Minister is a feminist prime minister, if women have been impacted most by COVID-19 and there is not a specific response to address that. If not, then those words are empty. We need a clear plan to address the lack of child care and the difficulties faced by schools. The federal government has to step up with funding to support both of those things.
It is obvious that COVID-19 has disproportionately affected women. We need a response that addresses the fact that women have borne the brunt of this pandemic. What we have seen so far is that the participation of women in the workforce is the lowest it has been in 30 years. That is unacceptable. That is why we need to provide funding and support to the provinces to ensure that everyone has access to child care. Child care is vital for getting through this crisis. It is absolutely essential. That is exactly what we are going to do. We are going to force this government to keep its promises so that everyone has access to child care.
Now I want to turn our attention to the current scandal that we are facing. In the middle of COVID-19, the government is mired in another scandal, this time involving WE.
I want to make one thing really clear. The government claims that it was trying to help students. I want to set that aside and make it really clear that this was never about helping students. This was about bailing out close friends of the Liberal government and close friends of the Prime Minister. If the government really wants to help out students, there are many existing programs it could immediately improve. It could immediately use existing programs like the Canada summer jobs program. It could immediately help students' access to universities by reducing their tuition or increasing grants or by reducing their debt.
There are so many things that the government could do if it really wanted to help students right now. It is a farce for the government to claim it is about helping students. It is clearly a billion-dollar bailout of close friends of the Liberal government and close friends of the Prime Minister. That is what the scandal is about; it is not about helping students.
I challenge the government: If it really wants to help students, it has a billion dollars it could put toward students right now. Put it toward reducing debt; put it toward reducing tuition fees; put it toward student programs or the summer jobs program. Do that.
The reality is that the government is not about helping students. The government did not want to help students; it wanted to bail out its friends.
The WE Charity scandal was not about the Liberals helping students. It was about the Liberals trying to help the close friends of the government and the Prime Minister.
We talked about empty gestures and a lack of action on COVID-19. In this crisis, we have talked about some of the help that Canadians need right now. We talked about the fact that the government made a choice to give a $1 billion bailout to close friends, but chose to make Canadians living with disabilities wait. The government made a choice to make Canadians who rely on the CERB to wait until the last moment before we forced them to extend it, but the government jumped so quickly to help its friends out with a $1 billion bailout.
These are the choices the government has made. It continues to choose again and again to quickly help out its friends, but to make people wait for help. That is the reality of this crisis. In the beginning of the crisis, the government jumped to help banks with billions of dollars, but again—
Government Business No. 8 July 8th, 2020
Madam Chair, I have two things.
First, I would just remind the member of where he is right now, while he is speaking. This would not have happened but for our ability to bring this forward. This is something we negotiated.
Second, the member has to be very careful. The Conservatives talk a lot about the importance of Parliament, but if we look at their attendance record, it does not really show that they think it is as important. That is something that is somewhat problematic, when they raise a concern on the one hand and also draw criticism on the other. It does not look very good for the member or his party.
Government Business No. 8 July 8th, 2020
Madam Chair, we have often said one thing regarding the economic recovery. A lot of people like to talk about things eventually going back to normal.
When I think about the economic recovery, I realize that things cannot return to business as usual. In the old normal, the most essential workers were the lowest paid, and seniors in long-term care facilities were the hardest hit by the pandemic.
What I want to see in the economic recovery is an effort to improve our social programs and our health care services. That is how we can move forward.
Government Business No. 8 July 8th, 2020
Madam Chair, I think one of the things we have to highlight when it comes to the response of the government is that at every step of the way the Liberal government has tried to do as little as possible. It was only after we pushed and fought and demanded more for people that we were able to get more for people. It was not like the Liberal government was going to do it anyway and it was a matter of speed; it was a matter of just not understanding the severity of the problem.
Again, we see that with the lack of help for Canadians living with disabilities; that was a choice. Again, we see that with the lack of real commitments to helping women return to work. Knowing that women have been disproportionately impacted, we need to make sure that the recovery plan addresses that by ensuring that there is a real plan to give financing and support to child care, which has been devastated as a result of this pandemic.
Moving forward, we need to put forward real solutions that address the problems people are faced with, and we know the Liberal government will not do it unless we fight and push it to do so.
Government Business No. 8 July 8th, 2020
Madam Chair, I will be sharing my time with the very hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby.
Throughout this pandemic, we have been focused on people. We knew that the pandemic's impact on people would be that they would not be able to pay their bills and would struggle to put food on the table. Everything we have done during this pandemic has been to push the government to deliver more help to more people.
We knew in the beginning that EI would not cover enough Canadians. We knew that EI only applied to 40% of Canadians, so we needed to do more than that. We needed to push the government to do more than just expanding EI.
Therefore, we pushed the government to create CERB and have the amount set at $2,000 per person. When the Prime Minister wanted to cut off CERB and leave families uncertain about their future, we fought back, and we won. However, we are not out of the pandemic yet. We still need to do more.
Throughout the pandemic, people have been struggling to pay their bills. They are having a tough time putting food on the table and paying the rent. We are not yet out of this crisis, this pandemic. Families and our economy need support to keep going.
Come August, after our fighting and pushing for the extension of CERB, there are still going to be many families that cannot go back to work. There is no work for many people to go back to. Canadians, our families, the economy and Canada need that support to continue.
With today's fiscal snapshot, we are going to hear from Conservatives, who have already laid out an argument saying that help for Canadians must end. We know that the Liberals will also use the fiscal snapshot as an excuse to cut help to Canadians, to families that need the help.
This fiscal snapshot, though very serious, presents a very important opportunity for a choice. The choice is this. Any time there is difficulty, we see government after government, which in this case is a Liberal government, while in the past it was a Conservative government, quickly move to putting the pressure on working families and putting the brunt of the pain on everyday families. However, they have never moved to ask the wealthiest, those at the very top, to pay their fair share.
If the government needs to cut costs, it should cut the costs of billions of dollars in giveaways to the wealthiest Canadians. If the government needs to cut costs, and I think the government should, then it should cut the cost of allowing billions of dollars to be lost to offshore tax havens. If the government needs to increase revenue, which I believe we need to do in this difficult time, we know there are significant companies that have made massive profits during this pandemic, such as Netflix and Amazon, that pay almost no tax in Canada. We know that the wealthiest, those at the very top, continue to amass fortunes, so we ask the government to put in place a wealth tax on those who have fortunes of over $20 million.
Let us ask the wealthiest to bear the brunt of the pandemic, not the families and the working people who are struggling to get by.
We are going to hear the Conservatives and Liberals use today's fiscal snapshot as an excuse to cut back on the support that people still depend on. Instead of looking for ways to cut support to those who need it most, the Prime Minister and his Liberal government should stop letting the ultra-rich avoid paying their fair share by giving them massive tax giveaways and turning a blind eye while they hide billions of dollars in tax havens. If the government needs to cut costs, it should cut the cost that tax havens represent to our economy. By making better choices, the Liberal government could get the wealthiest Canadians to pay their fair share.
Again, let us look at the choices.
In a difficult economic situation, it is time for difficult choices, but far too often the difficult choice seems to be to cut the programs and services that families depend on and that families desperately need. That seems to be the choice of Conservative governments, and often Liberal governments. They quickly go to cutting the services and programs that families in need are desperately relying on.
Instead of that choice, I put forward another choice. Instead of cutting the services and programs to families in need, the government can cut the massive giveaways to the wealthiest. We have just heard the parliamentary budget office talk about the $27 billion or more hidden in offshore tax havens. We know that the wealthiest Canadians continue to enjoy more and more wealth. Let us do two things: end offshore tax havens, and ensure that the wealthiest Canadians, those with fortunes of over $20 million, pay their fair share. Tax their fortunes of over $20 million, and use that revenue to pay for programs instead of cutting the services that families need.
For New Democrats, the choice is clear. We will always be on the side of working people. We will always be on the side of people and will not side with powerful, large corporations or the super wealthy.
Throughout this pandemic, we have heard the Prime Minister and the Liberal government say some nice things. Even before that, we heard the Prime Minister and the Liberal government say some nice things, but when it comes down to it, those nice things that they said turned out to be just empty words. I want to frame these choices and how the words of the Prime Minister have been so empty.
We pushed the government to commit to helping Canadians who live with disabilities without delay. The Prime Minister then released a plan that did not help all Canadians, and it came months after the last thought was to help out Canadians with disabilities. The Liberals completely ignored them. Then, when they provided a plan, that plan would not help all people living with disabilities. In fact, it would not even help the majority of Canadians living with disabilities.
The Liberals had a choice. They could have included everyone who needed help. They had a choice to include all Canadians living with disabilities. The Liberal government had a choice, and had the time to develop a plan that would help everyone in need: people getting the CPP disability, veterans getting support, students and people receiving social assistance payments from provinces or territories.
The Liberal government chose to make Canadians living with disabilities wait for help. At the same time as it told Canadians living with disabilities that they had to wait and would not get the help they needed right away, it immediately moved to help large corporations with, effectively, no restrictions. It would not even restrict help to a company that was overtly cheating the system by not paying its fair share. Other countries have banned or would not provide any help to companies using offshore tax havens, but Canada failed to do that. The government helped big corporations instead of helping working people. It did not restrict help to companies by limiting the bonuses paid to CEOs to $1 million, and it was willing to give money to help the largest corporations.
When it comes to his well-connected friends, the Prime Minister will stop at nothing. People living with disabilities, however, are still waiting for the government to take action.
I will quickly talk about some comparisons.
Again, Canadians living with disabilities were told to wait while friends of the government in WE received $1 billion in the blink of an eye. The government and the Prime Minister talk about being feminist, but we know that in this pandemic women have been disproportionately impacted. There is no recovery in this economy if we do not accept the gendered lens of the impact and put forward a plan that addresses that gendered impact, and that means there is no recovery without investment in child care—
COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Matters July 8th, 2020
Mr. Speaker, we have seen some serious concerns across the country with the use of wellness checks by police. In some cases, we have seen wellness checks by police result in the death of the person who was supposed to be checked.
Will the Prime Minister commit to a review of the use of wellness checks and the way they are conducted, and ensure that health care providers and health care professionals are responding instead of the police?
COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Matters July 8th, 2020
Mr. Speaker, let us look at the decisions that the government has made. The Prime Minister moved very quickly to give nearly $1 billion to his friends at WE, but, to date, Canadians living with disabilities have not received any support.
When will all Canadians living with disabilities finally get the help they need?
COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Matters July 8th, 2020
Mr. Speaker, to be clear, is the Prime Minister prepared to bring an end to tax havens, to loopholes, and ensure that the wealthiest Canadians pay their fair share?
COVID-19 Pandemic and Other Matters July 8th, 2020
Mr. Speaker, I guess I will take that again as a no. The Prime Minister is not willing to take on offshore tax havens.
How about this? Will the Prime Minister put in place a wealth tax on those who have fortunes of over $20 million so that those richest Canadians are actually paying their fair share instead of putting the burden on working families?