Social Development  Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for the great work he has done on behalf of persons with disabilities. The legacy of the late Jim Flaherty lives on through the programs we have created to help persons with disabilities, whether it is the registered disabilities savings plan, the

Social Development  Mr. Speaker, currently there are two vacancies, and we expect those to be filled very soon. The Social Security Tribunal is an independent administrative tribunal that operates at arm's length from the department. It is committed to providing fair, credible, and impartial appeal

Social Development  Mr. Speaker, it is obvious that the NDP has never been in government and does not understand how some of these processes work. Here are the facts. On April 1, 2013, the Social Security Tribunal was established. A year later, the members were ready. They are moving forward. We ex

Social Development  Mr. Speaker, the colleagues who should be hanging their heads in shame are every single one of the NDP who owe $1.17 million for the—

Social Development  The Social Security Tribunal is giving top priority to these legacy cases. It has committed to providing fair, credible, and impartial appeal processes in a timely manner. If New Democrats want to hang their heads in shame, I think now is the time.

Social Development  Mr. Speaker, the Social Security Tribunal started its operations on April 1, 2013, just over a year ago. It received higher than anticipated caseloads from the legacy tribunal. Having said that, this tribunal is ready now to look at all these cases, and we expect it to get caug

Employment  Mr. Speaker, to begin with, we will not take any lessons from the Liberals when it comes the temporary foreign worker program, which it used to bring in strippers. We will not take any lessons from the Liberals when it comes to the labour market or skills training, because they d

The Budget  Mr. Speaker, there have been no cuts to our homelessness partnering strategy. In fact, we have renewed our funding over five years. We have refocused on an evidence-based model to fight homelessness called Housing First. The NDP does not like evidence-based, results-orientated po

Housing  Mr. Speaker, we are listening, and we are providing common-sense solutions that actually produce results. The director of CHF, Nicholas Gazzard, said about the changes that we have made to help housing co-ops, “We are very encouraged that housing co-ops will be able to use these

Housing  Mr. Speaker, the real question is this. Why do the New Democrats and the Liberals vote against every one of our initiatives that set out to help Canadians with housing? For example, they voted against our providing $300 million to British Columbia for housing. In P.E.I., we signe

Housing  Mr. Speaker, as I stated yesterday, we actually are providing funding to the provinces. The provinces in turn are giving that funding to, for example, co-operative housing projects, or in some cases rent subsidies and in other cases seniors housing. Right across this country, pro

Housing  Mr. Speaker, the fact is our government has acted. We have acted in reasonable ways, working together with the provinces. What the NDP does not realize is that made-in-Ottawa solutions do not work in places like Estevan or Vancouver, B.C. or Halifax. What we have done is we hav

Housing  Mr. Speaker, I recently met with the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada. I met with so many housing groups. It was thanking us for some of the common sense changes that our government has made. What it was appreciative of, first of all, was the changes made in 2013 so tha

Housing  Mr. Speaker, let me tell the House what the executive director of the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, Nicholas Gazzard said with respect to what I just mentioned, allowing it to keep the subsidies. He said: This additional flexibility allows co-ops to use federal fun

Housing  Mr. Speaker, here is what our government has done for those who are the most vulnerable and those who need housing solutions. We have invested over $2 billion in previous budgets to fix and renovate. We renewed our investment in affordable housing with the provinces so that if th