Madam Speaker, almost two-thirds of the children living in northern Manitoba live in poverty, the highest number in the country. For them there is never enough. There is not enough food. There is not enough housing, and there is not enough medical care. There are communities such as Shamattawa, which in the last couple of years has dealt with a lack of clean drinking water, a COVID outbreak, a tuberculosis outbreak and an acute lack of housing. There are few communities in the country that better represent our collective failure as a country than Shamattawa does.
There is a stain of settler colonialism and an uncaring government that leaves people and communities like these to die. Garden Hill, York Factory, Tataskweyak Cree Nation and Red Sucker Lake are all communities, just from our part of the country alone, that the government has turned its back on. They are communities that do not know week to week whether the water they depend upon will be clean enough to drink or bathe in, whether there will be access to the medical care they need in their community if a loved one gets sick. These are communities that, during the H1N1 pandemic, were sent body bags and, during the COVID pandemic, were sent tents in the middle of winter.
For isolated communities like these, how can we ever talk about affordability when people's basic needs are not being met? These are communities that do not have enough doctors. These are communities that have a third world housing crisis. We are talking about 12, 15 or 20 people living in a home that is often infested with mould and inadequate for our climate. Fundamentally, these are communities that successive Liberal and Conservative governments will not stand up for, and it is everywhere.
In my hometown of Thompson, we see the struggle every day. It is a working class town that has lost most of its good jobs. They were sold off by successive Liberal and Conservative governments. People are worried they cannot make their rent or pay for their medication. People are out of work and they cannot make ends meet. These are people who have seen government rely on platitudes rather than supports they desperately need.
This is repeated in communities across the country. The ever-increasing concentration of wealth with the one percent while more and more are lost and struggling. It is a rigged system and the government shows its true colours every day.
The Liberals will say that we are all in this together to a family who just lost their job and cannot afford to fix the broken fridge, but they will actually give $12 million to Loblaws to buy new fridges. The government said that nurses and grocery store clerks were the real heroes of the pandemic, but they never got disaster pay, while wealthy CEOs used the wage subsidy to fund their bonuses. The Liberal government does not care about struggling people. It just plays that role on TV.
During the last election campaign, the Prime Minister promised to raise income tax on the most profitable big banks and insurance companies. We are still waiting for the Liberals to do that. Canadians expecting their government to stand up for them are still waiting. The reality is that in the six and some years they have been in power, the Liberal plan has made life easier for the wealthiest and largest corporations while everyone else is worse off. Time and time again, people who have so little have had to watch the government cater to those who have so much while people suffer. They are indigenous people, northerners, working people and the poor.
The billionaire class, not just from Canada but from all over the world, benefits from the government's inaction on tax fairness. Canada's reputation is used to advertise to oligarchs around the world, showing how generous Canadian tax laws are to help them develop their tax avoidance schemes. This was demonstrated in the latest report from Transparency International Canada, Canadians for Tax Fairness and Publish What You Pay Canada, which quotes:
Canada is a new player in the world of offshore companies...it has no negative offshore reputation and no association with tax avoidance or evasion. It is by far one of the best neutral jurisdictions, providing offshore benefits without any of the traditional offshore drawbacks.
This is Canada. We got to this point by design, not by accident. Canada's tax laws were left untouched despite a flurry of scandals and leaks from the Panama papers to the Pandora papers and more. These should have been a wake-up call the world over, but the Liberals have not budged. Despite losing tax case after tax case, and despite clear evidence that Canadian laws are not up to the task of dealing with tax evasion, tax avoidance and tax havens, we have yet to see the desperately needed overhaul of the tax system.
What should we expect from the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party who regularly fundraise off the billionaire class? Of the 100 richest families in Canada, each of them worth over $1 billion, 56 of them have contributed to the coffers of one or the other of Canada's ruling parties. Last week's report made it clear that they are getting their money's worth. The capacity of the Canadian tax code leaves the door open for tax dodgers to do as they please. As private companies can be owned anonymously, the shareholders, partners and other beneficiaries can act in darkness, sheltered by Canada from paying their fair share. There is no oversight as financial reporting is not mandatory.
Acting now is a matter of fairness and justice. There needs to be more transparency and disclosure in order to close this gaping tax loophole. These companies that act as fronts for tax havens must be brought to light and made accountable. Beneficiaries must be named. Disclosure must be required, to know on behalf of whom these companies are operating. There must be accountability requirements as well as real enforcement in case of false declarations and non-compliance.
Given that Canada has failed to successfully mount any cases against major tax cheats with its existing laws, and given that Canada is failing at prosecuting major corporate tax cheats despite regularly promising to add to the CRA's capacity to do so, we need to make sure that there is real enforcement of those needed changes to Canada's tax laws. We are not asking for much. Canadians are not asking for much. They are just asking for the Liberal government to live up to its rhetoric rather than continue along the path it always has, which is one of catering to the billionaire class rather than standing up for people.
With respect to big banks, big-box stores, insurance companies and oil companies, I implore my Liberal friends to trust me: These do not need their solidarity. In a time of record profits, they do not need the Liberals' help. A 3% surtax on these industries would still mean record profits and bonuses, but it would be world-altering for communities and people on the margins. They are the ones the government should be helping out. They are the ones who need our solidarity. They are the ones who want and need to see a plan from the government. It is time we stopped standing idly by and refusing to fix the loopholes that allow these companies to take the wage subsidy and, instead of investing it in workers, hand out million-dollar bonuses to those who do not need the money.
We must start taking seriously the issue of tax evasion and bring in a beneficial ownership registry in the upcoming budget to help tackle tax evasion and money laundering in real estate. Approximately $130 billion in illicit funds is laundered each year in Canada, mostly through businesses. This is not surprising, as Canada has some of the least transparent corporate laws in the world.
At a time when the Liberal government is not doing enough to build more affordable housing, billions of dollars in laundered money through home purchases put upward pressure on prices. That is why the government needs to accelerate the adaptation of transparency tools that discourage money laundering by criminals and the wealthy, including a nationwide publicly accessible beneficial ownership registry.
We must start investing in communities' infrastructure needs. Indigenous and northern communities that are at the forefront of the climate crisis need a partner in the federal government. We must use the Canada Infrastructure Bank to prepare communities that need it most to take on the climate crisis. The Infrastructure Bank, with its $35-billion budget, has yet to complete a single infrastructure project almost five years into its existence.
Today, what we are asking is for the government to match its rhetoric with its actions, to stop talking about standing with communities and actually stand with them, to stop being part of the problem and to start being part of the solution.
