Yes, Madam Speaker, I am sharing my time with the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.
Madam Speaker, we have the worst record for climate action and emissions reductions in the G8 and in comparison with the European Union. We have increased our emissions by more than 21% over 1990 levels, while the U.K. has reduced emissions by 40% and, on average, all countries in the EU have reduced emissions by 25%. Canada has signed on to nine international agreements on climate change and agreed to a set of targets for each of those agreements. However, Canada has had only one plan to meet those targets, under the Martin government, and we have met none of the targets we agreed to.
Our response to climate change is pathetic, but at least we have not triggered a constitutional crisis. Climate change and pandemics do not understand jurisdictional boundaries.
Now I will get back to the fall economic statement.
There is a serious need for additional support for small and medium-sized businesses. According to the research done by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, 180,000 companies are on the verge of closing their doors forever. Small and medium-sized businesses are the engine of our economy and hire far more private sector employees than big businesses do. They are asking for the government to extend and expand COVID relief programs for small businesses until the entire economy can reopen, including our borders, and small businesses can once again serve customers in person. The most recent lockdowns in Canada’s four largest provinces are testing the limits of small business operators.
The same thing can be said for the non-profit sector, which also needs continued support. We know that women have been heavily impacted by this pandemic, and it has set back advancements in the workplace by decades.
We need a just recovery that begins with serious funding for early childhood education and a universal child care program. The Green Party has been calling for universal child care for years.
We need increased support for the organizations that work with women who are facing intimate partner violence. Funding for these organizations was inadequate to begin with, and the pandemic has demonstrated why they need more support.
The work-from-home and learn-from-home requirements that the pandemic created have shown that there is an urgent need for access to high-speed Internet for rural and low-income Canadians across the country.
Post-secondary students have had a difficult time during the pandemic and need far more support. For years the Green Party has been calling on the Canadian government to adopt the northern European model for post-secondary education and eliminate tuition fees. At the very least in this moment, students should be getting relief for tuition fees and should have current student loan payments written off.
Seniors have been hit particularly hard during the pandemic. They have lost the community services and supports they rely on to make ends meet. They need increases to old age security and to the guaranteed income supplement.
The tragedy in long-term care homes in Canada has laid bare the need for proper standards to ensure that our seniors are not warehoused in profit centres, but instead are provided with homes and the dignity they deserve. The Green Party has called for national standards for long-term care homes, including implementing a basic care guarantee and increasing the number of trained staff in long-term care facilities to ensure a minimum of four hours of regulated personal care per day for every resident. We have called for better standards for workers. We called on the government to take the profit motive out of long term-care and focus funding on non-profit community-based care facilities. Again on this issue, we were told that setting national standards would create problems with the provinces, even though some provinces have clearly failed to properly care for seniors.
Canada is the only country with universal health that does not include universal pharmacare, and as a result, Canadians are paying way too much for their essential prescription medicines. Too many seniors in this country have to make impossible choices between taking medications as prescribed and paying for other essentials. Seniors are ending up with health complications and hospitalizations because they cannot afford to take their medicines. People who have lost their jobs have also lost their benefits, and they are faced with increased costs for medications. It is time for a universal pharmacare program. We need to get this done.
All over the country, there are still many people who are in trouble because they lost their jobs because of the pandemic. The Financial Post reported last week that we are now at a five-year high for Canadians facing insolvency. This is a problem that will only lessen once the pandemic is in the rear-view mirror. Until then, we must ensure that we do not let people lose everything because of COVID-19, because when people fall into poverty, the odds that they will be able to recover from such a setback are diminished.
Many of the pandemic support programs left people falling through the cracks. Since 2006, the Green Party has been calling for a guaranteed livable income to set an income floor under which no Canadian could fall. A GLI would have been very helpful to have in place before the pandemic, but it is also something that will help with the changes we will experience with automation and artificial intelligence, eliminating jobs. It will also help us deal with the changes that climate change is bringing.
We have an affordable housing and homelessness crisis in this country, and a whole bunch of eviction notices that are going to be coming due when the pandemic restrictions are released. We need increased government funding to deal with these dual crises, but we also need structural changes to deal with the increased financialization of residential housing and predatory investment practices. Housing is a human right, and we need to make sure that right is met in this country.
The Green Party will be supporting this bill. We want and expect better for Canadians, and we will continue to work with the government to improve the services that Canadians want and need.
