Paul Manly

[Canadian Dairy Commission Act, May 13th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I know we need to improve programs for farmers, who are small business owners. Small businesses have been encouraged to pay themselves with dividends for years. I ran a small business and that is how I paid myself. If I were still in business right now, I would not be eligible for a small business loan because I would be paying myself with dividends.

A lot of farmers work with contracts and contract out, so they are not eligible for the programs coming out. This is imperilling them. This is causing problems and we could end up losing a lot of small farms. In the areas where development is encroaching, that increases the dangers of losing farmland in our country.

[Canadian Dairy Commission Act, May 13th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, it is very important to look at some of these programs that were proposed before COVID-19. A lot of valuable ideas were floating around. Now that we are in a crisis, we are seeing how these programs could help farmers and small businesses. An example is the guaranteed livable income, which the Green Party has been promoting for decades, to ensure everybody has a floor of income that they cannot fall below.

These ideas have been around for a while and we should support them. A lot of learning is coming out of this crisis, especially when it comes to seniors and what has been happening in care homes. There is also the deficit in our health care system, the lack of maintenance of our hospitals and aging infrastructures. A lot of lessons are coming out of this. We were talking about them before this crisis and we can fix them after this crisis.

[Canadian Dairy Commission Act, May 13th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, the Green Party supports this legislation to amend the Canadian Dairy Commission Act. We also support additional measures to help our farmers.

As has been pointed out by many other hon. members in this place today, Canadian farmers need help. They need help to deal with the sudden disappearance of demand for their products. Tens of thousands of restaurants, cafés and diners closed their doors two months ago. Hotels and schools were emptied out. At that moment, the demand for dairy products to go into their coffees, baked goods, sandwiches and desserts evaporated.

Dairy cows do not suddenly stop producing milk when the demand for it disappears. And as dairy farmers cannot lower production quickly, they were faced with an unstoppable supply and no demand. Some milk was dumped, but instead of dumping it all, dairy producers across the country have donated hundreds of thousands of litres of excess milk to those in need. Dairy Farmers of Canada has announced that producers have committed to donate $10 million of dairy products to food banks across the country. Dairy producers have also donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash. I applaud them for their support feeding people in need.

The Green Party does not like to see anything wasted. We believe in the idea of a circular economy, where nothing is wasted and every product has a full life cycle, so I can say we do not like to see dairy products dumped needlessly. Dedicating more federal funds to help with the storage of butter and cheese is an important way the government can support dairy farmers and avoid wasting valuable food.

Unfortunately, the trouble for Canada's farmers and for food security in this country did not begin with the COVID-19 crisis, and it will not end when restaurants and cafés reopen.

The average age of a farmer in Canada is 55. Most aging farmers who have been surveyed report they have no succession plan for their family farms. Families that want to transfer farms between generations should be able to do so without facing a huge tax bill. This is something we can also fix.

At the same time, more and more young people are pursuing farming as an occupation. That is the good news. The bad news is that unless they grew up on a family farm and intend to take over from their parents, many young farmers have great difficulty accessing land to farm.

In British Columbia high property values are a major factor. On one hand, agricultural properties that are not protected by the agricultural land reserve are increasingly being developed for housing. On the other hand, ALR-protected farmlands that are not available for development are still too costly for young farmers to buy or lease. The unfortunate result of this situation is that agricultural lands end up sitting fallow or not being used for food production.

On Vancouver Island we have a very long growing season and one of the best climates in Canada for food production. We also have a large amount of prime agricultural land, but the number one crop being grown on Vancouver Island is hay.

Why are we not growing more food? This is a very relevant question to be asking right now. Food production has become too centralized and we are far too dependent on international supply chains. Up until the 1950s, about 85% of the food consumed on Vancouver Island was grown on Vancouver Island. Now we import 95% of the food we eat.

In the event of a serious supply chain disruption, such as an earthquake, Vancouver Island would be in a very perilous situation. We have a three-day supply of food in our stores and warehouses. We have a growing population. We need to get very serious about increasing our capacity to produce food locally.

That applies across the country. We urgently need to support efforts to relocalize food production. It is one of the most powerful actions we can take to develop resilient communities that will be able to weather the challenges of climate change in the coming decades.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light many issues and weaknesses in our food production chains in this country.

Nearly a decade ago, the federal government got out of inspections of abattoirs and passed that responsibility on to the provinces. The fallout of that decision is still rippling through small farms in B.C. today. Many small regional abattoirs shut down, because it was too expensive to comply with new provincial regulations that mandated a separate, dedicated washroom and office for the inspectors when they visited.

In many cases, this just strengthened the market position of big corporate players. Now, small-scale farmers who used to get their animals processed close to home at their local abattoir have to truck their animals for hours to a large abattoir. In many cases, the large abattoirs charge more than they used to pay and have large minimum orders.

Many small-scale farmers have had to get out of raising animals for meat. Every time this happens, it hurts local food security. It increases centralization in our food production, and it also means a lower quality of life for the animals being raised.

Many small farmers have farms that resemble the farms in children's books. Large industrial farms with tens of thousands of animals being raised in close confinement have very little to do with the farms in our children's storybooks. Bigger is not always better. The move to big feedlots and bigger slaughterhouses has led to issues such as the spread of COVID-19 among the workers. This is a provincial issue. Nonetheless, it has created serious problems for farmers and for the supply chain, and it will increase food prices for consumers.

The canola trade issue with China has highlighted another problem. Concentrating agricultural production on certain export crops leaves our farmers susceptible to trade disputes and unfair trade practices. It is important that Canada continue to do its part to feed the world when so many are going hungry, but it is just as important to ensure that low- and middle-income countries have the ability to feed their own populations, and direct foreign aid can help increase the capacity in those countries to help them become more self-reliant.

As I mentioned earlier, re-localizing our food production is key. For the first time in decades, we are seeing a significant increase in the number of young people who want to be farmers. That is a trend we can support and encourage. We need to figure out what role the government can play in connecting young farmers with land that they can farm on. These kinds of arrangements require long-term thinking, because it can take years to bring a former hayfield back to food production, but it can be done and is worth doing.

Organic regenerative farming can sequester carbon. It is a key tool in the fight against climate change. We need to support organic regenerative farming. We need to increase food security with more local food production. The government should provide more local food infrastructure funding so that communities across Canada can count on locally produced food, as much as the weather in their regions will permit.

I want to give a shout-out to the Cedar Farmers Market, which opened this past weekend, and today the Island Roots Market opened outdoors for the first time this season.

Local food production enhances our food security. It lowers the carbon footprint of the food we eat. We must develop and strengthen urban growing, and farms and community garden initiatives. This has been shown to create good employment, as well as nutritious, fresh produce and fruit for people living on low incomes.

Prior to being elected, I worked for a local non-profit, Nanaimo Foodshare, and I did skills training for people with barriers to employment and people with diverse abilities. We worked with them with food. We taught them how to grow food, how to cook food and what nutritious food was all about. We got them jobs in areas of food production, working on farms, working in processing, working at grocery stores and in restaurants, and engaged them in all those aspects related to food.

I remember being in the van with a group. We were going to a farm, and a young first nations fellow said to me that he did not want to go to work on the farm that day. He was not interested in a job on a farm.

At the end of the day, after spending the day out in the open air planting, digging and working with his comrades, he told me he really wanted a job on a farm, so I got him a job on a farm. He really enjoyed it. He loved it, actually.

Other young people I work with also love working on farms. They love feeding the chickens, taking care of the animals, planting crops and watching them grow and taking care of other things. There are a lot of young people who benefit from that.

The urban farms in my community grow a lot of local produce, which goes into good food boxes that Foodshare supplies. They go to low-income families, seniors, students and people with diverse abilities, because nutrition is key to physical health, mental health and our well-being. The young people with diverse abilities who face challenges in their lives feel a sense of pride in helping other people in their communities who face challenges. They are proud to step up and help other people.

I stated earlier that the trouble for Canada's farmers regarding food security in this country did not begin with the COVID-19 crisis and will not end when restaurants and cafés reopen. The sad reality is that a very large number of restaurants and cafés will never reopen. Those closures will have a ripple effect and negatively impact suppliers such as dairy farmers. Many restaurants and cafés were operating on very thin profit margins, and in some cases, newer restaurants were operating at a loss while they worked at building clientele. Many restaurants are very dependent on tourism in the summer months. Summertime is the high season for them, a time when they can make the money that gets them through the rest of the year. The dairy industry and many other industries depend on the restaurants and hotels getting tourist business.

The tourism industry is also facing tremendous uncertainty. Tourism employs more Canadians across the country than the oil and gas sector does. The prospects for tourism operators this year are grim. Hotels, motels, tour operators and fishing charters are only a few of the businesses in my riding that might shut down forever. Again, widespread closures would negatively impact businesses that are intertwined with tourism, like restaurants and farms. We need to make sure that these businesses are supported in order for them to weather this storm and survive until next year's tourism season.

We should start thinking about marketing strategies to increase domestic tourism. Our country will have to be creative as we come out of this crisis. We will not be able to rely on foreign tourism for a while. When it is safe to do so, we will need to encourage more Canadians to rediscover the tourist destinations in their regions. This is another facet of re-localization: rediscovering all there is to appreciate about the places we call home, reconnecting with nature and our parks and reconnecting with our communities, neighbours and local farmers.

Agriculture is very important to all of us. No matter what we do, what kinds of occupations, pastimes or passions we have, as my good friend Farmer Brown likes to say, “We all eat for a living.”

[COVID-19 Pandemic, April 20th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think I can take any credit for the drop in oil prices and what has happened in the oil field. I am sorry, but it would be great if I could.

I imagine a better world. I imagine a cleaner world and dealing with climate change and the climate crisis.

We already pay $173 billion between the federal government and the provinces for the network of social programs that we use, so we would just re-tweak that money and get rid of the welfare programs and all of these additional little programs and create one large program that would work between the provinces and the federal government, and make it fair and have a system where people get taxed back when they do not need it. Then we would not have to worry about bailing people out.

[COVID-19 Pandemic, April 20th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, it is really important to support the workers in the oil and gas industry. The oil and gas industry has been dining out on Canadian resources and skipping out on the bill, and leaving these orphan wells. It has been taking its profits and then declaring bankruptcy and leaving orphan wells. We have a huge mess in the oil sands that is going to need to be cleaned up. This is work that needs to be done and there are oil and gas workers who can do that work.

There is also lots of potential with oil wells. About 10% of them are good for geothermal energy creation, and that has been studied and is something that can be done to actually create revenue from some of these orphan wells.

As the price of oil drops, we are also seeing these folks who have the expertise in drilling are going to be able to create geothermal wells as well. We are going to be able to start moving toward renewable because, let us face it, we are not going to be able to compete with Saudi Arabia when it decides it wants to drop the price of oil the way that it has. We are dealing with a geopolitical strife on the oil front.

[COVID-19 Pandemic, April 20th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, that is the idea. Right now, we have a patchwork of different systems that people have to apply to, including welfare provincially or disability. There would be top-ups for people who have no ability to work, seniors or people with disabilities. That way, we would eliminate the bureaucracy of picking through people's lives to determine whether they are eligible for social assistance or a Canada emergency response benefit when we have another crisis.

Yes, it is an overarching program that would work with the provinces and the federal government, and we would need to negotiate it between the provinces and the federal government to make it work.

[COVID-19 Pandemic, April 20th, 2020]

Mr. Speaker, the Canadian emergency response benefit alleviated financial hardship for many Canadians, but unfortunately, too many are still without emergency relief. I have a long list of constituents and businesses that are currently missed by all of the relief programs that have been announced.

I have a constituent in my riding who is working part time and taking care of an elderly parent at home. In December, her father was hospitalized with congenital heart failure. When he came back home, she quit her job to care for him full time. By March, her father's condition had improved enough that she was able to start looking for part-time work again. Then the pandemic hit. She is viewed simply as someone who quit her job, and therefore, she is not eligible for help and is now struggling to pay her bills.

I have another constituent who was working two jobs. She lost the income from her main job and since her secondary job brings in slightly more than $1,000 per month, she is ineligible for assistance.

I have been contacted by students, some in the middle of their studies and some about to graduate. Students in the middle of their programs rely on summer jobs to pay their living expenses and to save for the school year ahead. Without those jobs, they do not know how they are going to pay their rent and grocery bills for the coming months. Some are uncertain if they will be able to go back to school in the fall and continue their studies. Graduating students are in a very tough spot as well. They are coming out of years of school, and they are looking forward to entering the workplace. Instead, they are facing a bleak reality and have nowhere to turn for help.

I have heard from seniors and people with disabilities. These Canadians are surviving on fixed incomes without any buffer for increased costs related to the pandemic. They are experiencing stress, anxiety and insecurity over being unable to cover their basic needs.

With each passing day, too many Canadians are getting closer to losing their businesses, their homes and their dreams. The stress and sense of hopelessness is taking a serious toll on mental health. Individuals, communities, cities, regions and our national economy will all be severely negatively affected if we allow these people and businesses to fall through the cracks.

What our current crisis has revealed more clearly and urgently than ever is that Canada needs a guaranteed livable income. A GLI is not a radical idea. It is an idea whose time has come. Imagine a safety net that captures everyone. For both social and financial reasons, Greens have been advocating for a GLI for years, and the Green Party caucus has been working to advance the national conversation on a guaranteed livable income.

My hon. colleague from Fredericton spoke about the need for a GLI in her speech in the House of Commons during the emergency session a month ago. My hon. colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands brought it up again in the House a week and a half ago. A guaranteed livable income is an idea that the Green Party has been promoting since long before any Greens achieved the honour of taking a seat in this place. It is an idea that has gained support across the political spectrum, because it is a sound and sensible thing to do.

A guaranteed livable income is a fair system that alleviates financial hardship and rewards work. It would replace our patchwork of federal and provincial programs with a single, universal, unconditional cash benefit. The principle is to establish an income floor below which no Canadian could fall. The amount would be based on the cost of living in each region the same way a living wage is calculated. The benefit would be progressively taxed back according to income. Allowing low-income workers to retain the full benefit would be a strong incentive to continue working. There would be no big clawbacks that create disincentives.

The GLI would eliminate extreme poverty and free up our social services to focus on our mental health crisis and addiction crisis. An emergency guaranteed livable income could be set up to automatically make a payment to every Canadian with a social insurance number. Those who did not need the payment would have it taxed back by the CRA in the next tax season.

A guaranteed livable income in normal times would replace federal transfers for social assistance, disability supports, the old age supplement, the guaranteed income supplement for the elderly, the Canada child benefit for parents with children and the Canada workers benefit for the poor, all of which are very guaranteed livable income-like programs.

Because it is a benefit all Canadians would receive, a guaranteed livable income would eliminate the social stigma associated with needing income assistance. We would no longer have to pick apart people's lives to ensure they are eligible.

A GLI would make it possible for more people to upgrade their education and skills, increasing employability and wage-earning capacity.

Studies and pilot programs have shown that a guaranteed livable income or universal basic income improves the health outcomes of low-income people. They can afford nutritious food and a place to live, and long-term stress associated with poverty is decreased. These are just the broad strokes.

The benefits of a GLI are many, but right now, in the midst of an unprecedented public health crisis, there is one potential benefit that stands out. Delivering a single, universal, unconditional cash benefit to every Canadian would be simple. Because a GLI would replace our current patchwork of benefit programs, it would dramatically simplify the administration required and save money there as well.

Everyone would receive a monthly payment. Most of the time, most people would not really need it and the funds would flow back to the government through taxes. However, when circumstances change, whether it is one person who loses a job or millions, having a guaranteed livable income in place would help us weather the storms ahead.

There are other storms coming. We know we are in a climate crisis. Epidemiologists and scientists have told us that we can expect more pandemics, we can expect more emergencies, we can expect more situations where people will lose their jobs and lose their homes as we struggle to deal with this climate crisis.

A guaranteed livable income would allow us to navigate future challenges without the stress, anxiety and hopelessness that too many Canadians are enduring now.

[COVID-19 Pandemic, April 20th, 2020]

Mr. Chair, I am very appreciative of the members of Parliament who have brought forward issues from their constituents.

I am glad to hear that the rules for the loan program for small business have changed, but there are still some people who are missing this program. I have a family business with a father and son who have poured their life into setting up a microbrewery. They opened in November. They paid $13,000 in wages in December, $13,000 in January and $13,000 in February, but they are not eligible for the small loan.

I am hearing from other small businesses in the same vein, start-ups that need help now. Is there a way we can be more flexible in these programs and less rigid with their rules, because people need help and are going to lose their businesses?

[COVID-19 Pandemic, April 20th, 2020]

Mr. Chair, the Tillicum Lelum Aboriginal Friendship Centre in my riding serves 12,000 urban indigenous people. The centre runs on a meagre $139,000 in core funding for the programs it runs. The centre is still running programs during this crisis, including a health centre, a youth safe house, youth and elder housing, a home for single moms, a food hamper for 150 families, and family violence counselling and addiction counselling. During normal times, they also run employment programs, adult basic education, day care, youth programs, family programs and meal programs, all with just $139,000 in core funding.

The centre is an integral part of our local indigenous community and is struggling seriously through this crisis. It is now one of the front-line organizations dealing with the COVID-19 crisis in my community.

The government has allocated to friendship centres $15 million of the $305 million in relief funding allocated to first nations, Métis, Inuit and indigenous organizations. This is out of a total $180 billion relief fund; that is, out of $180 billion dollars, $305 million is for indigenous organizations.

Will the government increase the relief funding and the core funding for the aboriginal friendship centres serving the urban indigenous populations across this country?

[COVID-19 Pandemic, April 20th, 2020]

Madam Speaker, this is a very surreal time here in the House of Commons with just a few members. I had a very strange trip across the country to get here. I had the choice of taking a 16-hour red-eye trip overnight sleeping on the plane or dividing it into two days and going through airports that were empty.

The Green Party represents 1.1 million voters, so it is important I am here to represent those voters. On average, 387,000 voters voted for one MP. If we break down those numbers to other parties, we see 38,000 for the average Liberal and 50,000 for the average Conservative. I have a lot of people to speak for, so I am here to speak for those who voted Green.

We need to respect the directives of the health authorities, and we need to respect our health care workers and our front-line workers who are risking their lives to fight this pandemic. We have been working with the Liberal government behind the scenes, not playing politics during this pandemic but contacting ministers and parliamentary secretaries and bringing forward issues.

We have seen some of these programs come forward, and we have put forward ideas about how they need to change and where they are missing the mark. We have seen those changes come, sometimes not as quickly as we would like and sometimes not all that we want, but we are working together. We are all in this together.

Grocery store workers, front-line health care workers and nursing home workers all do essential work that cannot be done remotely. In addition to that, none of these workers has to go through two or three airports to get to work like I did. Corporations all over the world, including some of the biggest in the world, are working remotely. Classrooms are holding meetings on Zoom and teachers are able to give their students a chance to speak and interact. We should be able to work remotely, as well.

MPs who have limited access to the Internet could work remotely from a hotel or motel close to where they live and cut down on their travel across the country. We would save some money as well. MPs have worked effectively to this point to provide oversight, yet some of the members of the House are trying to instill fear and create a problem that does not exist.

We have a way to hold the government to account, and all one needs to do is watch the videos of the finance committee meetings to see that.

This pandemic has laid bare many of the problems we have in this country. I have spoken about the conditions in a seniors home in my own community, the Nanaimo Seniors Village. Thankfully, that operation was taken over by the Vancouver Island Health Authority, so it was able to fix the problem before the pandemic happened.

That seniors home was flipped multiple times by private operators. Every time that happened the workers were laid off, the union was decertified and then the workers were rehired at lower pay for part-time jobs with no benefits. Those workers had to go to work at multiple care homes. We are seeing this situation play out in different places across the country, and what has now happened is that those workers are spreading COVID-19 from one seniors home to another, creating a tragedy that was completely avoidable.

Students are falling between the cracks, students who did not have work and were hoping to work this summer. Students who are graduating and had jobs lined up are not eligible for any programs. Seniors and people with disabilities are facing higher costs due to COVID-19 and are not receiving the help they need.

Microbusinesses and new businesses are falling between the cracks. A microbrewery in my community started up in November. It does not meet the $20,000 payroll requirement for last year, but it paid $13,000 in payroll in December, it paid $13,000 in January and it paid $13,000 in February. These people are going to lose their life savings and hard work, all of their commitment, because there is nothing to help them.

I have a constituent in my riding who is a senior who has worked her entire life. Last year she was off for eight months due to an operation. She got back to work in January but does not qualify for the CERB because she did not make $5,000 last year, even though she earned more than $5,000 every other year of her life and paid taxes. Now she needs support but there is nothing there for her.

We have a solution to that. What we are seeing is the glaring inequality in our communities. We have a crisis of homelessness in my community and in communities across the country. A guaranteed livable income is a way that would help to make sure that no Canadian ever falls below a standard of living that gives them a place to live, good nutritious food to eat and quality of life.

We could do an emergency guaranteed livable income and send a cheque to every Canadian and use it like reverse billing where those who do not need it return it. In the end, next year in tax season those who did not need it and did not return it would be taxed back on it. That would mean that we do not miss these people. I can give a long list of people who have been missed by these programs. We need to get our economy up and running again, and we need to do it safely.

We should be looking at the example of Taiwan. My brother lives and works in Taiwan. It was in the top 10 countries affected by COVID-19 in February. It had the first presumptive case the same day that Canada did in January. When people saw the virus starting in Wuhan, Taiwan ramped up production in their factories. They used the military to help ramp up production of PPE in their factories. They stockpiled personal protective equipment.

My brother missed two weeks of teaching at school. His wife missed no work at all, so two weeks after the winter break the students all went back to school with masks on. My brother teaches class with a mask on. He goes to the pharmacy every week and he gets three masks. That is his ration. Taiwan banned hoarding and made it so that people who were price gouging would face seven years in jail or a $700,000 fine. They took it seriously. Taiwan is now 106th on the list of countries affected by COVID-19. It has had 422 cases and six deaths. Canada is number 13. We have 36,000 cases and 1,600 deaths.

There will certainly be time, at the end of this crisis, for analysis and lessons learned. The government has been humble in acknowledging that its original response was not perfect, and it solicited advice from opposition MPs to make the programs better. Many Canadian individuals and businesses are still falling between the cracks.

Now is not the time for finger pointing and partisan bickering. We need to continue to focus on flagging the groups of individuals and businesses that are not covered by the COVID-19 assistance programs and make sure they get help.

We face an even larger crisis: the climate emergency. We have all acknowledged that. Scientists and epidemiologists have warned for years that climate change will create the conditions for pandemics. Wildfire season has already begun in B.C. Flood preparations are happening around the country. We need to listen to the scientists in this case as well and take action to avert disaster.

The COVID-19 crisis has shown us that we can do that. We can all work together. We can act. Our future, and the future of our children and grandchildren, is dependent on our action.

We have also seen that funding in health care is very important. We need to make sure that our health care system is robust, and that our infrastructure for health care is robust. It is important.

There are many lessons we can learn from this difficult situation. Right now, those are lessons that we should not forget as we navigate our way through this crisis and hold fast to the belief that we can emerge from it better together. Together we can do this.