Mike Morrice

[Petitions, April 18th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise to present a petition on behalf of over 1,200 people who note, first of all, that people with disabilities often face barriers to employment, along with higher costs associated with health care and housing. They go on to note that the Canada Disability Benefit Act was delayed for over two years; the first attempt to establish the law, known as Bill C-35, was postponed because of the 2021 election.

The Canada Disability Benefit Act was meant to provide much-needed financial support for people with disabilities, many of whom live in poverty. They note that the minister responsible has told Canadians that implementing the Canada disability benefit is estimated to take a minimum of 18 months, following the passage of Bill C-22, which received royal assent last June. They note that there are insufficient supports in current disability programs federally and, particularly, provincially. This presents a significant risk to life and health for people with disabilities across the country who live in legislated poverty. They note that the federal government has refused to provide people with disabilities with an interim disability emergency response benefit and that the government has yet to bring the Canada disability benefit into force. The government is not starting the 12-month regulatory time clock, which is further delaying the benefit.

As a result, the petitioners call on the Government of Canada to bring the Canada disability benefit into force within two weeks of this petition being presented in the House.

[Persons with Disabilities, April 17th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, we have had this conversation dozens of times in the House over the last three years. I have heard, time and again, about a need for time for the regulations, negotiations with provinces and territories, “nothing without us” and that they need to do more. The difference now is that, with this budget, their cards are on the table. There was a dollar amount in that budget, and that dollar amount was $200 a month.

The government set the expectation that this benefit was meant to lift people out of poverty. The Liberals find money for the Trans Mountain pipeline; they find $35 billion for that. They send $18 billion to oil and gas companies that are already making tens of billions of dollars in record-breaking profits. However, when it came time to step up and demonstrate that there was well-placed trust from the disability community, the community was let down.

Are the parliamentary secretary and others going to put pressure on the government to expand what was in the budget and do better?

[Persons with Disabilities, April 17th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party platform in 2021 promised that the re-elected Liberal government would implement the Canada disability benefit and that “this new benefit will reduce poverty among persons with disabilities in the same manner as the Guaranteed Income Supplement and the Canada Child Benefit.” The Liberals were, of course, elected that year.

In the time since, thanks to consistent pressure from the disability community to keep that promise, the government slowly put forward a bill that needed significant improvements every step of the way, including ones that my team and I secured, such as requiring an application process that is without barriers and indexing the benefit to inflation. The government then told those in the disability community that it was consulting with them, including inviting people from across the country to spend significant time completing a lengthy survey.

Finally, yesterday, we got the government's proposal for the Canada disability benefit in budget 2024, and it was nothing that folks with disabilities were calling for. The maximum amount of $200 a month is far too little to actually reduce poverty levels among folks with disabilities. They have limited eligibility to those already receiving the incredibly burdensome application process for the disability tax credit, in contravention of the amendment I mentioned earlier that called for it to be barrier-free, and it will not even start until July 2025.

The total cost is just over $1 billion a year. The Liberals promised the Canada disability benefit would reduce poverty in the same way that two other programs did. The guaranteed income supplement is about 15 times as much and pays out a maximum of just over $1,000 a month, and the Canada child benefit is 24 times as much annually and pays out a maximum of just over $600 a month. The Canada disability benefit, as proposed, does little to help the disability community and seems to be much more about convincing non-disabled Canadians that the government is helping people with disabilities than about doing what it said it intended to do.

As a result, folks with disabilities are deeply disappointed, and that is putting it kindly. Here is a sampling of reactions from the past 24 hours that I would like to read into the record. Some of the language is quite raw, but it reflects the pain that some folks are feeling.

Laura says, “I have never been so disappointed in something in my entire life.” Mitchell said, “This is the ultimate failure. What an atrocity. No fairness here”. Cody said, “$2400/year? That's not just a joke, but an outright slap in the face to the disability community. You should be ashamed of yourself.” Kate said, “This budget announcement of adding a max of 200 more a month to a select few disabled people is The Most Liberal Party thing I've ever seen”. Illandria said, “So much for 'Lifting Disabled People Out Of Poverty In Canada'...They REALLY put the 'NOTHING' in NOTHING WITHOUT US”.

There are leading organizations that have been advocating for the benefit. Krista Carr from Inclusion Canada said, “Our disappointment cannot be overstated.... This benefit was supposed to lift persons with disabilities out of poverty, not merely make them marginally less poor than they already are.”

Samuel Ragot from La Société québécoise de la déficience intellectuelle said, “this is worse than my worst case scenario. Not only is it not enough, using the DTC will gatekeep the benefit from SOOOO many people. My heart goes to the people living in poverty who will have to keep fighting everyday to survive.”

Lastly, Michelle Hewitt from Disability Without Poverty said, “To say we are disappointed is an understatement. Yesterday's announcement on the CDB is woefully inadequate.” Again, it looks to me like the government is not even trying to do right by people with disabilities.

Will the parliamentary secretary admit that the Canada disability benefit, as proposed yesterday, is a performative measure intended to make non-disabled Canadians think the government is doing something of substance for the disability community when it is clearly not?

[Canadian Sustainable Jobs Act, April 15th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I would agree with what Equiterre said about this bill, which is that there is no reason to hold it up for any MP in the House, because there is almost nothing in it.

We heard a quote from a young people's group, I think I understood from the parliamentary secretary, which I believe is being misled when it talks about the investments that are being directed by this bill. There is nothing about that in here.

This bill creates a council. It requires the government to create an action plan that has not been written yet, but would be created in a few years, and is going to create a secretariat to then advise on the bill.

The bill could have had significant investments in young people's future in a just transition. It could have had investments in just transition transfers to provinces and territories. None of that is in this bill.

The member is a vocal and strong advocate for taking action on the climate crisis. Why is she not pushing the government to move further and faster?

[Oil and Gas Industry, April 12th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I want to start by agreeing with the parliamentary secretary that the debate in this place on climate has been reduced over the last number of months, but we cannot allow this false debate about the carbon tax, which is the most efficient way of taking action on the climate crisis, to take us away from what must be done to follow the science.

The parliamentary secretary spoke about taking action now. On that point, I agree with her as well. The concern is the amount of time it has taken since this commitment was first made. It is true that no other country has a cap, but neither do we still. It has been two and a half years. We need to see this move more quickly, but we also need to see it be stringent enough. We need to see these loopholes eliminated to ensure the reductions come at least even closer to what we must do to follow the climate science between now and 2030.

To follow up, will she commit to pressing the government to reduce its meetings with big oil, which have only gone up in the time since and which have happened at the same time as these loopholes have increased, and will—

[Oil and Gas Industry, April 12th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, we remain in a climate crisis, one that requires urgent action if we hope to leave a livable planet for future generations. I rise this afternoon to continue to press the government to do better on its commitment to capping big oil's emissions, following up on a question I asked back in December.

It was over three years ago now, in November 2021, when the Prime Minister first said, “We’ll cap oil and gas sector emissions today and ensure they decrease tomorrow at a pace and scale needed to reach net-zero by 2050.” It sounds nice, particularly when emissions from oil and gas in 2021 were 189 megatonnes; this was an increase of 88% since 1990 and 28% of Canada's total emissions.

Beyond the nice words, let us be clear: This commitment, even in its original form, did not follow climate science to begin with. First, it committed to cap only oil and gas emissions, not production. This is a significant issue; if we hope to hold global average temperatures below 1.5°C, with even a 50% chance of doing so, Canada would need to do its fair share of what remains of the global carbon budget to achieve this goal. That would mean we would have to leave 86% of our proven fossil fuel reserves unextracted. Therefore, it is clear that we must address not only emissions but also production as we shift to other energy sources.

Second, net zero by 2050 is not worth the paper it is printed on if we do not do our fair share of what is required to limit global warming to no more than 1.5°C in the short term. This means reducing it by at least 60% below 2005 levels by 2030, along with international support in emissions reductions across the Global South, equivalent to another 80% of Canada's 2005 emissions. Nevertheless, in the three years since, the government has continued to weaken and even delay this insufficient announcement.

To start, the emissions reduction plan in 2022 said the cap would decrease oil and gas emissions by 79 megatonnes, to 110 megatonnes, aligning with the 40% reduction from 2005 levels by 2030. As I shared, that is already less than what climate scientists tell us is required. The minister then promised that it would all be done and in place by the end of 2023. All we got by then was a framework for discussion, and it is full of loopholes. Now that 79 megatonnes that were promised dropped by more than half.

Now only 34 megatonnes are projected to be reduced; the government is doing things such as exempting 20 megatonnes from downstream oil refining and pipelines and another 25 megatonnes for compliance flexibilities, which is a code word for buying offsets. Now we know that this weakened cap will not even be in place until 2026. How could this have happened? In the two years since, big oil put forward a full-on campaign, pressing the government with 2,000 meetings. There were three meetings a day, seven days a week, and no days off; clearly, it must have worked.

Will the government put an end to these meetings with big oil, put our children's future ahead of their greed and place a real cap on big oil's emissions?

[Housing, April 11th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, it has been two years since the government committed $1.5 billion to build co-op housing across the country, yet two years later, instead of returning to annual predictable investments in deeply affordable co-op housing, this one-time program has not even launched. Instead, last week we heard more announcements while thousands of shovel-ready co-op projects are still waiting.

What is the point of making announcements, if they are not going spend the money, and when will the minister commit to these much-needed co-op homes being built?

[Canadian Sustainable Jobs Act, April 11th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, what a nice question from my Bloc Québécois friend. If the Greens were in power, they would make the investments and, as I mentioned in my speech about what experts and workers across the country are calling for, they would support a just transition.

[Canadian Sustainable Jobs Act, April 11th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, there were procedural games on all sides when it came to December and the discussion on amendments to the bill.

On the member's point about trust, that is a really important one. On that point, we can agree that we need to be doing more to be more honest with workers about what is actually in the bill.

The member mentioned the words “just transition”. This is a term that has been deeply turned into a partisan context. However, the reality is that the term just transition speaks of justice for workers. We need to centre the interests and rights of workers in the transition to a clean economy.

I am disappointed that the term has become as politicized as it has. I am disappointed that it is not in this legislation, because it is workers who fought for it to be in the Paris agreement.

[Canadian Sustainable Jobs Act, April 11th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Winnipeg North is right in that an action plan is a good thing. The concern is that it does not meet the moment we are in. Talking about an action plan, whether it is December 31, 2040, or whatever it ends up getting moved up to as a result of votes this evening, is not recognizing that we need investments today. We need action today. We need to talk about a just transition transfer today and a youth climate corps today.

There is this idea of one day in the future writing an action plan that could have ideas in it that would have helped us if we had done it in 2024. That is the reality. Our kids are going to look back at this moment and ask what we were thinking. Yes, he is right that an action plan is a good thing. It is not nearly enough if it is some day far in the future, if we recognize we are in the midst of an emergency now.