Mike Lake

[Committees of the House, October 3rd, 2024]

Madam Speaker, it has been very interesting to listen to the debate today. Obviously, folks are passionate about this issue on all sides. As I reflect on this, I think about the university presentations I get a chance to do. I do a lot of presentations talking about, basically, how we define normal. I share stories of my son's life with autism and video clips that we have had a chance to make over the years, where he is being included in musical theatre in school, working in the school library and those kinds of things.

It is interesting; some of the universities I visit are not in the most Conservative places in the country. I can think of some in the GTA where I am not sure how many Conservatives there would be among 500 students. There are probably more today than there have been in the past. Once in a while, they comment on how they do not automatically think of the Conservative Party when they think about those issues. They ask me to explain that a little bit. I explain it by saying that, in this place, we are human beings before our party affiliation, regardless of our party. We all want the best for people with disabilities.

Based on some of the words we hear today, some people would like folks to believe that one party or another party does not care. The reality is that we all care about creating the best opportunities and the best Canada for people with disabilities. Sometimes, we just have different thoughts on how to get there.

I look at the timeline on the bill. It is important, given the tenor of the debate today, to highlight that, first of all, this idea came up in the 2020 throne speech first. It then came to the House, I think, as Bill C-35 in 2021. Of course, the priority for the government of the day, at that point in time, was an election in the summer of 2021. Everything was shut down while we spent $600,000 or $700,000 on the election, or whatever amount of money it was. It was hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars with all of our parties. It was $600 million, not thousands.

Obviously, it was money that could have been spent on other things. We fought that election, and then the government brought back the legislation as Bill C-22. It went through over the course of time. It was not a high priority. It took two and a half years to get it passed. It is really important to point out that, when it did pass, it passed unanimously in the House of Commons.

There is nobody in the House, regardless of what some members want people to believe, who did not support Bill C-22, who did not support the Canada disability benefit. This is a really important fact. On our side, we were concerned about a significant lack of clarity. We have said this over and over again.

There was less information in this piece of legislation than in almost any piece of legislation I have seen, with more left up to the future regulatory process in terms of what that would look like. In this debate today, we are seeing the consequences of that lack of clarity.

Another thing that is really clear right now is that what the Liberals were promising, the expectation that they were creating, was dramatically higher than the reality that came to be when the Canada disability benefit was delivered. I suspect that this is largely because of the issue of priorities. This is the highest-spending government in the history of our country by far, with double the amount of spending of any other government. The amount of debt we have run up is unparalleled. I think the bottom line is that the Liberals are running out of money; even for the things that they say are important, they do not have the money to fund it.

It is also really important to note that, as we are having the debate, we have a situation where the NDP is criticizing the government relentlessly, day in and day out, about everything. Again, everybody in the House is on the same side in terms of the importance of getting things right for Canadians living with disability and the operation of that, in a sense, in terms of the way that it winds up being in the House.

It is not just the Canada disability benefit. It is everything else. I think it would be right for Canadians listening in on this debate to ask this: If this is so important to the NDP, how in the world did they not negotiate what they wanted in their deal with the Liberals?

This has been one of the longest-serving minority Parliaments since the twenties or thirties, maybe in the history of the country. The NDP vote with the Liberals, to support the Liberals, every single day in the House. They endorse the Liberals with their positions and their votes. At any point in time, the NDP could have said that something is the line in the sand. They could have used their leverage to get whatever they want out of the Liberal Party. On this issue, obviously, it was not a priority at the negotiating table for the NDP. We just have to take that context into consideration as Canadians listen to this debate.

One thing I would like to focus on is outcomes. We talk a lot about dollar amounts, with big dollar amounts for some programs. The Liberal defence today has involved talking about how much money the program costs. However, we have to take a look at outcomes.

I think about the outcomes that I want for my son Jaden, who is now 28, Canadians like my son, and people around the world like my son. He was 10 when I was first elected; he will turn 29 in November. He was two and a half years old when he was diagnosed in 1998. We want timely diagnoses for things that can be diagnosed. Obviously, in the disability world, it is not all about diagnosis. We want early help for people when they need it in those early years. We want to make sure that we have an education system that includes people to the maximum. Obviously, this is mostly in the provincial jurisdiction. We want to make sure we have proper housing, employment opportunities, skills development and those kinds of things.

Of course, as parents, we often think about what happens when we are gone. One thing I consider when I think about Jaden and people like him across the country is that we want to make sure we have good programs now. We want to make sure that Jaden and other Canadians who are vulnerable have the supports they need right now. We are also concerned about the future. We want to make sure that the same supports, or better supports, are there for our loved ones when we are gone.

Right now, I am very concerned about the level of government spending overall, at the dramatic record-setting levels of spending we have seen from the Liberal-NDP government, which has recently been supported by the Bloc. When Jaden was diagnosed in 1998, provinces across the country were having difficulty funding diagnosis and early help for people with autism. One reason they were having trouble was that the Liberal government had initiated a 32% cut in 1995. This was a generation after the massive deficits run up by the Trudeau government in the seventies and eighties. It was a real cut, not the fake type of cut that members often allude to, in transfers to the provinces for health, social services and education. I think it was in the $35-billion range overall. This was just gone because of a fiscal situation brought on by the massive debt and deficit run up in the seventies and eighties. I feel as though we are going down that road right now.

I think the people who are most hurt by the inflationary policies of the government in the current circumstances are the most vulnerable people in Canada, including Canadians with disabilities. They are living on fixed incomes. Those populations will be the ones hurt down the road when the real crisis hits because of the fiscal situation the government has created.

I look forward to questions. I hope we can come up with some ideas in this place about how we could actually create better outcomes for Canadians living with disabilities.

[Committees of the House, October 3rd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe misleading the House is against the rules of the House. The hon. member can look at every single budget from the Conservative years—

[Committees of the House, October 3rd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the subject of Jim Flaherty will probably come up over the next three hours. I want to make sure we are clear on a couple of things because the hon. NDP member did not know who he was, and the Liberal member mocked him and his legacy a little in the House. Of course, Minister Flaherty passed away in 2014. He had a son with a developmental disability and was very public about it.

The CBC said, “although Flaherty's legacy may be measured by his effectiveness at keeping the books balanced during one of history's most calamitous economic periods, he was also passionate about improving quality of life for disabled Canadians.” André Picard, of the Globe and Mail, wrote, “Disability community ‘has lost a true champion’ in Jim Flaherty”.

As we are having the conversation about this important issue, which affects many of us and many of our families, I am just going to make this comment. I am not even going to ask a question. I hope that we can all show some respect in this place and understand that we all want the best for Canadians living with disabilities.

[Committees of the House, October 3rd, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, we heard both NDP members of Parliament reference Conservative approaches to disability. I would point out that during our time in government, our finance minister, Jim Flaherty, known as a champion for the disability community, introduced measures to help Canadians with disabilities in every single budget, including ready, willing and able; the RDSP; the employment works program; and the Canadian autism partnership working group. In this Parliament, the only party fighting against the extension of MAID for people whose sole issue is disability is the Conservative Party.

I want to point out one thing. She said that the Conservative government decreased health care payments. We hear that all the time. The fact is that our Conservative government increased transfers for health care by 6% every single year.

Why does the member and her party continue to spread the falsehood?

[Finance, September 25th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, the hon. parliamentary secretary talked about the enviable position we have in Canada. She touted good news for property owners renewing their mortgages. However, because of the policies of the Liberal government, a Canadian renewing, say, a five-year fixed-term mortgage in September today versus someone who had a mortgage in September 2019 could be paying between $500 and $1,000 more in monthly mortgage payments for the same house. That is for an average house in Canada, depending on where someone lives. I do not know that this is good news for anybody, and it is in a context of record food bank usage and unemployment that is 1% higher than it was five years ago at the same time.

I would love the hon. member to explain how that is good news for people renewing their mortgages.

[Finance, September 25th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, tonight, I have a chance to revisit an exchange I had in question period at the end of May. Sadly, it was an exchange about the economy. Things have not gotten any better since May here in Canada, and we find ourselves dealing with a continuing economic crisis brought on by the policies of the Liberal government following, of course, the failed Trudeau economic plan of the seventies and eighties. Now, in successive Liberal governments led by that family, we have run 24 deficits in 25 years and had a constant stream of crises: housing crises, energy crises, unity crises and the like.

My question back then was about how the most incompetent, reckless government in Canadian history was undertaking radical experiments with objectively terrible results. Of course, it has been supported by the NDP and now the Bloc. Back then I referenced an RBC report that talked about “a slow bleed over the last 2 years [that] left per-capita output back at 2016 levels”, and I asked about that falling per-person income in Canada.

The response from the parliamentary secretary at the time was kind of interesting. He did not defend the government, talk about the successes that the government had or refute any of my claims. He took issue with the fact that I would use GDP per capita, or growth per capita, as a measure. He said it was “not a particularly useful one, as most economists will say.” Therefore, I did a bit of digging.

This was not very hard, actually, to find on the Statistics Canada website, so I am not sure whether the Liberal government is anti-Statistics Canada right now. However, this year, Statistics Canada had this to say: “Slower economic growth over the past year and near-record population increases fuelled by temporary and permanent immigration have put the spotlight on recent trends in Canada’s gross domestic product...per capita.” It went on to say, “Recent reports...have all stressed the trend towards weaker per capita growth, highlighting its negative implications for living standards and wage growth.”

This Statistics Canada document quotes information that the parliamentary secretary, on behalf of the government, says is not credible or supported by economists. A little later in the same document, Statistics Canada said, “GDP per capita is widely used to gauge differences in living standards across countries. Higher levels of per capita output are generally found in more developed economies with advanced infrastructure, better health care and education systems, and higher levels of access to technologies and innovation.”

As such, whichever parliamentary secretary is going to answer the question today, I would like them to correct the record if they could or clarify the Liberal position on whether rapidly declining GDP per capita is bad. My assertion is that it is bad for Canada. The parliamentary secretary said it was not necessarily bad. More importantly, I want to hear something about a plan. We have four minutes right now; I hope we will hear something about a plan, moving forward, to reverse the economic devastation being inflicted on our country by the Liberal, NDP and now Bloc coalition.

[Committees of the House, September 19th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, again, the situation we are in right now is infinitely worse than the situation a decade ago.

We are sitting in a situation where, in the member's province, run by an NDP government, housing starts in the middle of a housing crisis are down 31% over the last year. We can go back a decade in history, but what is probably more relevant to this conversation is the last three or four years in which the NDP and Liberals have worked together to create the absolute crisis that demands urgent action right now.

[Committees of the House, September 19th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I have a lot of respect for the hon. member. When we look at the current situation, and we have heard this from members from all parties, we have to acknowledge that the status quo is not working.

Certainly the answer cannot be to throw more money at the problem. The amount of record spending that the government has done over the last decade has led us to the fiscal crisis we are in, as well as the inflation crisis, the housing crisis and all of these different things.

Again, I would urge Canadians to look at our leader's building homes, not bureaucracy bill. I could read through some of the bullet points, but beyond the measures that talk about transfers through municipalities, one of the areas is to withhold transit and infrastructure funding from cities until sufficient high-density housing around transit stations is built and occupied. Cities will not receive money for transit until there are keys in doors. That is just common sense.

[Committees of the House, September 19th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, that hon. member lives in a fantasy world that I can only imagine visiting one day.

If we look at the facts around that time, our Conservative government took on a global economic disaster and we set out a plan to get back to a balanced budget by 2015. In 2014, Canada had the richest middle class in the world.

Fast forward 10 years and we are running unthinkable record deficits. The cost of housing, mortgage payments, down payments and rent is double what it was when our current leader was the housing minister.

Prices have doubled in that time, yet that member has the audacity to celebrate in the House the imagined success of his Liberal government. That is ridiculous.

[Committees of the House, September 19th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to take part in the debate today. I will be splitting my time with the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola.

I find this to be a fascinating debate. We are debating concurrence in a committee report that says that the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities recognizes Canada is in a housing crisis that requires urgent action by the federal government to end homelessness and that this motion be reported to the House. We are talking about it being a crisis that requires urgent action.

It was interesting to hear the exchange between the Liberal member and the NDP earlier. The Liberal member for Winnipeg North in particular was complaining about the fact that we were discussing this today. He consistently complains about these things. He referred to Bill C-66 and made an urgent call for us to get back to that. I know all parties support the bill. It has been before the House for over 180 days. We sat until midnight virtually every night in the spring and the government did not bring the bill forward. We did not have the conversation, so it was not urgent at that point in time. Our shadow minister has signalled that we support this. We recognize that there are some things all parties in the House support, and that bill is one of them. Hopefully it will be a priority for the government and will pass very soon.

I believe this report also passed unanimously, recognizing the crisis situation and the urgent need to have conversations.

The wording and type of language is very familiar. In the Liberal 2015 platform, close to a decade ago, the Liberals said:

We will conduct an inventory of all available federal lands and buildings that could be repurposed, and make some of these lands available at low cost for affordable housing in communities where there is a pressing need.

About a decade ago, and recognizing the similarity in wording, the Liberals promised to make this a priority and recognized that there was a “pressing need”.

Nine years later, in the 2024 budget, the Liberals almost used identical wording. They talked about the federal government conducting a “rapid review” of its entire federal land portfolio to identify more land for housing. That was an active sentence, that the federal government is conducting a rapid review. I guess “rapid”, by the Liberal definition, is nine years for something urgent, and the situation has only become worse.

I found it really interesting to listen to the NDP interventions on this, particularly that of the member for New Westminster—Burnaby, who talked about the current government and how terrible it was, forgetting the fact that up until two weeks ago he was, for all intents and purposes, a part of the Liberal government through the Liberal-NDP coalition. I will note that, as terrible a fiscal situation as we were in in 2021, when the NDP joined the Liberal Party, things only got dramatically worse for Canadians after it joined the then completely incompetent Liberal government. We are sitting in a situation right now where rents, down payments and mortgage payments have doubled. Canadians who have mortgages coming due right now, after five years, are going to, without a corresponding increase in their income and their ability to pay, be paying hundreds of dollars, in some cases over $1,000 more, in their monthly mortgage payments without any increase in their income. The NDP members have supported the situation that has gotten us to this place, this predicament right now, every single step of the way for the last three years.

There has been a lot of talk about the Harper years. I was a part of that government from 2006 to 2015. I had the privilege of serving on the cabinet subcommittee that looked at ways to get the budget back to balance, which we did by 2015.

However, I would go back to the situation in 2014. There was a pretty interesting conversation going on, driven by the New York Times and some international research institutes. They found that in 2014-15, Canada had the richest middle class in the world. I am sure there were challenges for some Canadians, but, by and large, we were in a better fiscal situation than any country in the world. Even people like Hillary Clinton were lamenting this in conversations in some of the articles that were written at the time. Experts from around the world were pointing to Canada as an example of how to deal with a difficult financial situation coming out of the global meltdown. That was in 2014.

Let us fast forward 10 years to 2024. We are no longer the richest middle class in the world. Our middle class is, as a percentage of our population, by all measures, contracting. Regular people, people who never, ever even contemplated the fact that they would need to use a food bank, are now lining up at food banks with their kids in cities across Canada.

Let us look at the situation we are in again, and listen to the NDP talk about the housing crisis and where we are right now relative to the past. This crisis did not exist in the same way in 2015. Let us look at cities across the country. Housing starts in August were down 13%. At this time, when we need to be building houses, housing starts are down 13% across the country.

I would note that in the Liberal member's city of Winnipeg, housing starts are down 16% from August 2023. In B.C., under the provincial NDP government, housing starts are down an astonishing 31%. In Vancouver, which is very close to New Westminster, where the hon. member for New Westminster—Burnaby is from and represents, housing starts are down 34%. In Toronto, under the leadership of a former NDP member of Parliament, Olivia Chow, housing starts are down 48% over the last year. Those are just astonishing drops in housing starts across the country.

We have a real crisis. I think all parties have recognized that this is a crisis and that we need to deal with it urgently now.

One member of Parliament in the House has been dealing with this issue right from the start. That member of Parliament is our Conservative leader. In 2021, at the start of the pandemic and the explosive additional spending by the Liberal government, which was eventually propped up by the NDP, he brought up the effect of the increase in interest rates over and over again. He was mocked for bringing it up by the finance minister and by the Prime Minister on a regular basis.

A year ago tomorrow, we were talking about a private member's bill that our leader had put forward, a bill that would deal with the housing crisis in an urgent way, in a common-sense way. I will not have time to read all the highlights of that bill, entitled the “Building Homes, Not Bureaucracy Act”. Canadians can look that up on ourcommons.ca. However, I will point out that when we put out this common-sense, good-faith bill to get more houses built in Canada, every non-Conservative member of the House, Liberal members, along with members from the Bloc and NDP, voted against that private member's bill that would have created significant action toward housing over the last year.